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MEMOIR AND LETTERS 

OF 

FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

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BY 



ARRIA S. HUNTINGTON 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<@bt ffiitoer?ibe pre??, Cambridge 

1906 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two C^ies Received 

OCT 29 1906 

xi Copyright Entry 
CLASS A XXc, No. 
COPY B. / • 



COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ARRIA S. HUNTINGTON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published November iqob 



PREFACE 

In the preparation of this Memoir the endeavor 
has not been to construct a complete Biography, or 
to include in a comprehensive record the many in- 
terests, the acquaintances, and the correspondence of a 
long life. Bishop Huntington's early religious experi- 
ence was unusual, and that is given in his own words. 
Other considerations beside the inadequacy of the 
editor for theological and historical labors were 
taken into account in confining the work to a limited 
space. It would not have been consistent with the 
personality portrayed to reproduce, merely for the 
honor paid to their subject, the noble and eloquent 
tributes rendered him in press and pulpit, and only 
those are here preserved which throw a direct light 
upon traits of character. 

The writings of Frederic Huntington, in the course 
of two generations, have reached people in all lands 
who never saw his face or heard his voice. In the 
field of education alone thousands of teachers have 
drawn help and inspiration from the little book, 
" Unconscious Tuition." His sermons and devotional 
volumes continue to awaken to righteousness, and 
bring spiritual consolation to earnest souls. For such 
as these, for the Clergy of his own Diocese, and the 
flocks who loved and revered their Chief Pastor, as 
well as for the old Parishioners who cherish his mem- 
ory, these imperfect recollections are gathered up. 






CONTENTS 

I. Heritage and Youth 1 

II. The Divine Commission 44 

III. The First Call 67 

IV. A New Path 110 

V. Spiritual Conflict 153 

VI. Divine Guidance 182 

VII. The Pastor and his Flock 212 

VIII. The King's Messenger 250 

IX. Entrance on the Episcopate 279 

X. The Royal Law 323 

XI. The Road Uphill 365 

XII. The Journey Ended 422 

Appendix 427 

Bibliography 431 

Index 433 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Bishop Huntington — 1887 . . Frontispiece 

Portrait of Frederic Dan Huntington at the 
Age of Twenty-seven, from a Crayon Por- 
trait in 1846 by Seth Cheney . . .86 

Bishop Huntington's Birthplace and Summer 
Home at Hadley 374 

Bishop and Mrs. Huntington — 1895 . . 412 



to%t*C{iZ~ 







MEMOIR AND LETTERS OF 
FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

CHAPTER I 

HERITAGE AND YOUTH 

" In this place there was a record kept of them that had been pil- 
grims of old." 

On the first day of the past century a wedding took 
place in the old family mansion at Hadley, Massa- 
chusetts, which may well be memorable to the many 
descendants of Dan Huntington and Elizabeth Whiting 
Phelps. The alliance was entirely suitable, in view of 
the position of the bride and bridegroom, their an- 
cestry, kinsfolk, and education. Both came from a 
lineage of distinguished Connecticut forefathers; on 
one side the Huntington founders of the town of Nor- 
wich, the Metcalfs, and the Throops; on the other 
the early settlers of the towns of Northampton and 
Hadley, sons of Hartford and Windsor colonists, 
brave and gentle folk who landed in the Mary and 
John at Dorchester in 1630 and made their way 
across the wilderness a few years later. 

The bride's grandfather, Moses Porter, 1 lost his life 
as captain of a militia company in the tragic Battle 

1 See notes in Appendix. 



2 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

of the Morning Scout at Crown Point in September, 
1755, leaving a widow and little girl in the house then 
newly erected two miles north of Hadley village. His 
wife was descended from Rev. John Whiting, a grad- 
uate of Harvard College in 1653, a godly and esteemed 
minister of Hartford, who seems to have been, in the 
long line of ancestry, excepting Rev. Dan Huntington, 
the only progenitor from whom the future bishop in- 
herited an inclination towards the calling of a preacher. 1 
Elizabeth, daughter of John Whiting and Phoebe 
Gregson, became the wife of Nathaniel Pitkin, 2 son of 
William Pitkin, 3 who held high office in the Hartford 
Colony. Their daughter, Elizabeth, married Captain 
Moses Porter, and of this marriage there was but one 
child, Elizabeth. She became the wife of Charles 
Phelps, descendant of Nathaniel Phelps, who was a 
founder of the town of Northampton and one of the 
first deacons of the church there. The offspring of 
tins union were a son and daughter: Moses, whose 
name was changed to Charles Porter, born August, 
1772, and Elizabeth Whiting, born February 4, 1779, 
who became the bride of January 1, 1801. 

Of distinctly Puritan stock, without any mixture 
on either side, the history for six generations is that of 
stout-hearted men of action, with established religious 
convictions, faithful to church and state, upright in 
morals. Public service was rendered in those times 
as part of social obligation, and more often at personal 
sacrifice than for any expected recompense. Such is 
the record of early days gathered from the reminis- 
cences of Rev. Dan Huntington, written in old age, of 

1 See notes in Appendix. 2 See notes in Appendix. 

3 See notes in Appendix. 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 3 

his homo in Lebanon, Connecticut, and of the relatives 
and neighbors — Huntingtons, Wolcotts, Trumbulls, 
Throops, Metcalfs, Masons, Wheelocks. 

William Huntington, father of Dan, enlisted under 
General Putnam, served with him in the beginning 
of the Revolution, and was in command of a company 
of militia when New London was burned by the 
regulars ; an incident well remembered by his young- 
est son, then a child, who saw the smoke of the con- 
flagration from their home. 

Dan Huntington graduated from Yale College in 
1794, with the first honors. He became a tutor at 
Williams College, then just established, but was 
recalled to a similar position at Yale, which he held 
for two years, pursuing his studies in theology with 
the president, Dr. Timothy Dwight. This gentleman 
published in his celebrated "Travels" 1 an account of 
the Hadley estate, which he pronounced "the most 
desirable possession of the same kind and extent 
within my knowledge;" going on to describe at some 
length its attractions. It was on a visit to its owner, 
Charles Phelps, that he met the daughter Elizabeth 
Whiting, and was much impressed with her charm of 
person and of character. He did not fail to mention 
these attractions to his favorite tutor, with a suggestion 
that the young man might find in her all the qualities 
most desirable in a minister's wife. Not long after- 
wards, Rev. Mr. Huntington, having been asked to 
occupy the pulpit at the Hadley meeting-house on a 
Sunday, was invited on the following Tuesday to 
drink tea with the family of Squire Phelps. The ao 

1 Dr. Edward E. Hale calls this "the first guide-book of New 
England, excellent reading to this day." 



4 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

quaintance thus begun (whether by chance or contriv- 
ance, who can tell ?) ripened into a mutual affection, 
and the marriage was celebrated the following year. 

In his "Family Memorial," written as an octo- 
genarian, Rev. Dan Huntington says that at this time 
he was much attracted by the current setting towards 
what was then called "the West," the Connecticut 
reserve lands in Ohio. But the place of assistant 
minister at Litchfield, Rev. Mr. Champion having 
become disabled, was offered to him. He accepted, 
and was ordained to the work of the ministry in Sep- 
tember, 1798. This "delightful village" was, as he 
himself describes it, "on a fruitful hill, richly endowed 
with schools, both professional and scientific, and 
their accomplished teachers ; with its learned lawyers, 
and senators, and representatives, both in the National 
and State departments; and with a population en- 
lightened and respectable. Litchfield was now in its 
glory. I came among them without patrimony; but 
with their assistance, in a handsome settlement, I soon 
found myself in a way to be comfortably at home 
among them, with a neat domicile of my own." 

The house which he built for himself was burned in 
1861, but the stepping-stones remaining are the same 
over which the family were wont to pass, and some 
of the original fruit-trees, preserved by grafts, have 
been remembered as the "minister's pear," to the 
present generation. Through the pious commemoration 
of a townsman, a fine portrait, copy of a miniature, 
painted on ivory, at the period of Rev. Mr. Hunting- 
ton's pastorate, has been placed in the chapel of the 
church, among those of the other deceased ministers, 
Rev. Lyman Beecher being his immediate successor. 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 5 

To this home and parish, possessing attractions to an 
unusual degree, was introduced the bride of the new 
century, after " a long journey over frozen ground, 
through snow-banks, and amid the storms of winter." 
Writing to his grandchildren in old age, her hus- 
band says playfully: " On this, as on all other subjects, 
all is well that ends well. If you would know more 
about it, my dear children, try it for yourselves when 
the time comes. What say you to a courtship of a 
year or two without an engagement ? the heart, without 
the hand ? the apparent affection, but not the promise, 
anterior to the marriage vow ? " 

The character of the young minister was genial and 
cheerful; even in his declining years one who knew 
him well testifies: "Never were ears less open than 
his to listen to the Crack of doom, — never was tongue 
less ready than his to be a prophet of coming disaster. 
Every village stir was not in his opinion a crisis. He 
waked and slept, and waked again and the Lord sus- 
tained him. He was willing to labor and to wait and 
pray. 

"The manners of our friend were gentle and his 
words well chosen. Had he found it necessary to go 
into a King's Palace we should have felt no concern 
as to his bearing. He would have carried himself with 
a singular grace, without any amazed awkwardness, 
and as one who had somehow been there before." 

We learn from such a tribute, given by an intimate 
friend of the subject of this memoir, 1 how largely the 
youngest son owed to his Huntington blood a kindly 
and genial instinct, and a simplicity of character 
which especially distinguished him. 
1 Rev. Rufus Ellis. 



6 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

There is no doubt that from his mother Frederic 
inherited a strain so opposite to the sanguine and the 
optimistic, so austere and so reserved, that an effort 
must be made to portray faithfully the remarkable 
character which she possessed. 

Elizabeth Whiting Phelps was an only daughter. 
Her childhood was spent mostly at home under refined 
and happy influences. Mrs. Phelps, the mother, was 
an active, clear-minded, cheerful person, keeping an 
open house, administering the affairs of a large estate 
with justice and generosity, social, neighborly, and 
unaffectedly religious. Her disposition shows itself 
through the pages of her diary, kept from her six- 
teenth year, and was in contrast with that of her hus- 
band, who was more inclined to moods. In his family 
some singularities have been traced back to an ances- 
tress Grace Martin, who married Nathaniel Phelps of 
Northampton in 1676, herself recently come from Eng- 
land. Early annals speak of her as " of great resolution 
and perseverance and a little romantic withal." In her 
descendants one finds a tinge of melancholy, reticence, 
and reserve, and that indifference to the opinion of 
others which borders on eccentricity. There was also an 
idealism, and a tenacity of opinion which showed itself 
strongly in the life of the elder Charles Phelps, in his 
vision of a great university on the Vermont hills, and the 
dogged resolution with which he resisted the formation 
of that state and its separation from New York. 1 

From such antecedents Elizabeth Phelps inherited 
a strong character, high ideas, passionate self-devotion. 
Like her mother she had a keen sense of humor and a 
quick wit, but she did not share the same sprightly 

1 Under a Colonial Roof -tree. 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 7 

1 nature, and in her Journal an unusual seriousness 
manifests itself. Beginning at the time when she made 
an outward confession of religion in 1798, her entries 
soon go beyond the customary scrupulous record of 
each Sunday's sermon and text; prayers, meditations, 
self-questionings are poured out as the natural expres- 
sion of a sensitive and highly spiritual soul. 

On her wedding day she writes : " Is this the closing 
scene of my single life ? the time which for more than 
a year I have been anticipating and for which prepara- 
tion of mind ought to have been made?" And on 
reaching Litchfield : " I am now settled in my dwelling ; 
now am I under the inspection of an attentive town — 
but this intimidates me not, the eye of the Lord is upon 
me, therefore let me fear before Him." 

Birthdays of all her children were marked by special 
prayer. Of a maidservant born in the house she writes : 
" Elvira is eighteen years old to-day. I would entreat 
Almighty God to forgive all that has been amiss in 
my treatment of her and my intercourse with her; 
help me in time to experience more meekness, forbear- 
ance, longsuffering, gentleness." 

From the first, when she became mistress of the 
Litchfield Parsonage, there was nothing plaintive or 
timorous in the way she met the world and its duties. 
Children came fast and were welcomed, and with these 
cares were added those of her position: visitings and 
tea-drinkings ; associations of ministers and clerical 
exchanges, demanding frequent hospitality; visits 
from her honored parents and consequent entertaining. 
The limited income of a country parson was neces- 
sarily supplemented with a liberal hand by Mr. and 
Mrs. Phelps, who were not too far removed to send 



8 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

wagon-loads of fruit and stores across the Connecticut 
hills. In the constant correspondence between mother 
and daughter there is no recognition of stint or de- 
pendence, although the demands of a growing family 
finally compelled Rev. Mr. Huntington to remove to 
Middletown, where for a while he added receipts from 
boarding-pupils to his income. In 1816 Mrs. Hunt- 
ington's father died, having completed an upright and 
useful career, one of his latest services to the com- 
munity being a care for the erection of the meeting- 
house, in Hadley, to this day in good preservation and 
a model of Puritan architecture. 1 His estate was di- 
vided between the son and daughter, the latter retain- 
ing the old homestead and buildings adjoining, with 
a farm of so considerable extent that it would afford 
provision for a large family. It seemed wise and pru- 
dent for the Rev. Dan Huntington to remove thither, 
he himself continuing to preach at intervals in different 
places. In May, 1819, the eleventh and last child, the 
seventh son, was born. We find this record in his 
mother's journal — a little homemade book of nar- 
row sheets of note paper, clear, firm, and accurately 
indited. 

June 27, 1819. Hadley. 

Sabbath Evening. 

The 28th day of last month, about eleven o'clock 
in the morning, I was made to rejoice in the birth of 
another son ; never can I admire and adore the good- 
ness of God for his mercy to me in this time of distress, 
anxiety and danger — how much better did he deal 

1 This edifice was erected in 1808 in the West Street of the village, 
and removed to its present site in 1841. The weather-cock was 
brought from England for the earlier building in 1752. 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 9 

with me than I feared. I am ashamed of my unbelief 
and of my shameful distrust of Thee, O my Covenant 
God, why is it that I am so favored ? Thou art gra- 
cious and merciful to the evil and unthankful. I be- 
seech thee to enable me to spend my future life more 
in thy service and to Thy glory, make me more diligent 
and active in instructing those around me, and espe- 
cially my dear children in the things of salvation, and 
wilt Thou crown my exertions with Thy blessing. 

In particular would I plead at this time for the 
precious little one just brought into the world. I have 
been the means of giving him a sinful, corrupt nature. 
I can do nothing to effect his salvation, without the 
influences of Thy Spirit, O be pleased to help me, and 
especially dwell in his heart, by Thy grace, and suffer 
him not to go in the way of sin; renew his heart early 
in life if it may consist with Thy will and prepare him 
to be a blessing in the world and blessed at last in Thy 
heavenly kingdom. Thou hast enabled me O Lord, 
to wait upon Thee in Thy house and to dedicate him 
to Thee in Baptism, now may we feel that he is not our 
own, but may we be careful to bring him up for Thee, 
who has so kindly dealt with us. 

This was the day of the baptism of Frederic Dan, 
just a month after his birth. The entry is inscribed in 
the hand of the old pastor, Rev. John Woodbridge, in 
the records of the Church of Christ, Hadley; a fact not 
of itself of any significance except for the connection 
of this rigid old Puritan with what became a largely 
controlling influence in the life of the child whom he 
had admitted into the Christian fold. 

Not two years after Frederic's birth the same re- 



10 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

gistry sets down minutes of a church meeting at which 
a letter of petition was presented by the Reverend Dan 
Huntington. 

Although a clergyman in the Congregational body, he 
had become interested, through correspondence and 
study, in the movement towards Unitarianism. He was 
beginning to associate himself with other little groups 
of thinking people in the towns of western Massa- 
chusetts. Joined with him in the letter was his brother- 
in-law Charles Phelps, lately removed from a Boston 
law practice to a new house on the family estate. That 
the attitude of these minds was not one of entire sep- 
aration from the covenant of their forefathers seems 
evident from the fact, attested in the pastor's own hand, 
that the letter to be considered requested from its 
writers communion with the church " as Unitarians " 
and " the same privilege for their children, who desire 
it with the same views of Gospel which they themselves 
entertain." 

The place of worship at Hadley was the nearest to 
the family residence, situated in the neighboring vil- 
lage. It was there that Elizabeth Phelps, before her 
marriage, had united with the confessed followers of 
Christ. She herself had the full right of participation 
in the sacrament, and her husband desired it for him- 
self and the sons and daughters growing up around 
them. The request was refused, in a tone which be- 
trays all the bitterness of ecclesiastical controversy. 
The reply, after remarking that " it is a novel and un- 
precedented thing for persons having no communion 
with a Church to solicit a participation in its privileges," 
goes on to state the differences as shown in the Unita- 
rian writings: "It is one of their favorite objections 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 11 

against the system that it strips the most high of every- 
thing amiable, and clothes him with all the odious at- 
tributes of a Tyrant. In their estimation the religious 
worship we pay is offered to a being of the most ma- 
lignant character and to one who is dependent as we 
are for his existence and all of his attributes. How if 
this imputation be just we can deserve to be called 
Christians it is difficult to imagine. If the Church 
should comply it would seem that an assent to the con- 
fessions of faith is not essential to membership." 

" It would imply that the doctrine of the Lord's 
divinity is less essential than it is." Very natural ob- 
jections were raised that it would tend to disunion and 
might lead to proselyting; ''that it would open the 
door to other errors in belief." 

The summing up was as follows: "For these rea- 
sons the Committee believe that the applicants should 
place themselves under our watch by a transfer to us 
of their special relations to the Church of which they 
are respectively members." The expression " under 
our watch " is the key-note to an inquisition henceforth 
practiced towards Mrs. Huntington. Knowing how 
many of the "First Churches " of the Calvinistic strong- 
hold were deliberately renouncing its doctrines and are 
to-day Unitarian places of preaching, it is not strange 
that rugged characters of Puritan descent should adopt 
measures which seemed warranted by the taint of 
heresy. 

The inclinations, associations, and views of the Hunt- 
ingtons had become well known. Rev. Dan Hunting- 
ton traveled up the valley and over the hills, frequently 
taking with him some member of his family, preaching 
to the small flocks of ardent disciples of the " Liberal 






12 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Christianity" which was to them mercy and not 
wrath. 

Elizabeth Huntington at home read Channing and 
Martineau and Dewey and Henry Ware, and the 
"Monthly Religious Magazine." On the Puritan Sab- 
bath she took her children to sit with her under the old 
pulpit from which issued vivid pictures of future retri- 
bution. The youngest child, Frederic, never lost the 
impression of those anathemas. To his wondering 
mind the streaming tears of the minister were as inex- 
plicable as the threats of impending doom. He used to 
say in later life that it became fixed in his mind that the 
preacher's habit of crying visibly and audibly in public, 
was " because he was afraid too many people would be 
saved." At regular intervals appeared the officers of 
the church, making long visits, searching, questioning, 
arguing with the saintly woman whom they held sub- 
ject to inquiry. To the high-strung, thoughtful boy, 
loving his mother passionately, believing her the best 
and purest of beings, it was a puzzle which he could not 
explain. He knew that his mother fasted and prayed 
and sorrowed for daily sin ; kept tender watch over her 
children; perused eagerly the literature in behalf of 
the abolition of slavery and the establishment of uni- 
versal peace, and extended her practical sympathy to 
the inebriate, the oppressed, the slave. 

The result is on record in her own handwriting. 

" xAugust 17th, 1828. A week ago yesterday Deacon 
J. Smith and Deacon Hopkins made me the second 
visit. The Monday after Mr. Woodbridge sent me a 
letter requesting me to meet the Church the next day 
to answer to the complaint laid against me — which is 
that I have not attended the sacrament of the Lord's 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 13 

Supper with them for five years — the reason of this 
was that Mr. Woodbridge said I ought to be excom- 
municated for being a Unitarian — the inference which 
I drew from this was that I ought not to disturb his 
feelings — nor those of his charge by attending, tho' 
I did attend his church-meeting and to-day he has 
been laboring with his Church to persuade them to the 
duty of excommunication and church discipline — the 
Lord direct them in the way of duty. 

" Nov. 2nd, 1828. The Church have withdrawn their 
watch and fellowship from me by public act and a copy 
has been sent me. 

"Nov. 2nd, 1828. As I am dismissed from the 
Church in Hadley, I have concluded to unite with the 
Church in Northampton. 

"Nov. 23rd, 1828. Attended meeting; Mr. Wood- 
bridge preached, also Thanksgiving Day. 

" Dec. 13th, 1828. Last Sabbath Whiting, Bethia, 
Frederic and I attended meeting at Northampton, the 
two first and myself were admitted to the Communion, 
as I had been dismissed from the Church in Hadley I 
thought it best to unite there tho' I do not agree in 
every particular with Mr. Hall, — yet as he requires 
no particular creed and he seems to be a serious and 
conscientious man, I hope it may be acceptable to my 
Maker to follow this course. 

" Dec. 27th. Last Sabbath went to meeting in town 
(Hadley) Mr. H. is to preach to-morrow in the Central 
School House. What a blessing it would be to have a 
place of worship where we could go regularly and 
pleasantly attend — but Thou O Lord must make all 
things for our good." 

It will be remarked that with quiet dignity Mrs. 



14 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Huntington continued at intervals to attend Mr. Wood- 
bridge's sendees and to maintain her connection with 
the church from whose communion she was excluded. 
It became the family custom for some members to at- 
tend worship either in the nearer village of North Had- 
ley or in the Hadley meeting-house, while as many as 
could be conveniently conveyed drove to the Unitarian 
gathering in Northampton. In that same memorable 
year of the excommunication, we read in her diary 
that she visited Boston with an older son and heard Dr. 
Charming and Dr. Gannett, then both in the full glory 
of their fame and influence. 

The effect of the intolerance so unusually manifested 
was no doubt strongly a personal one to the young boy, 
who, finding it unintelligible, grew up with a sense that 
a blow had been struck wantonly against his mother, 
in herself a model of piety and Christian forbearance. 
It led him in his youth to seek inspiration in those writ- 
ings which were to her the sources of joy and high' re- 
flection. But beside this inclination towards the liberal 
thought of the day, there was for many years deep 
down in his being a repulsion towards that creed which 
he then believed inevitably associated with actions 
fraught with deliberate ill-will. In an article in the 
''Monthly Religious Magazine" for September, 1845, 
on " The Religious and Theological Interests of Har- 
vard College," he alludes to the experiences of his boy- 
hood in seeing "a noble-hearted, devout woman, in an 
advanced period of her useful, honorable and bene- 
ficent life, on account of a deliberate and well-weighed 
change of opinions, followed after, persecuted, threat- 
ened, warned by menaces most terrible to a woman's 
sensitive, trustful, affectionate nature, at last roughly 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 15 

excommunicated from a Church of which she had been 
for years an untiring benefactor, and which her blame- 
less spirit had so long adorned. 

" The tears and anxiety we used to see with our child's 
eyes, after those impudent deacons and sly ambassa- 
dors, or their spiritual dictator, had withdrawn from one 
of those cruel interviews, left an impression that will not 
lose its horribleness while we remember anything. This 
was in the heart of our old Massachusetts, in the 
midst of its hills and valleys and free air, some of the 
loveliest scenery in the world, indeed, but not beautiful 
enough to move and soften the gloomy features of that 
stern, forbidding, unrelenting Calvinism." Many years 
after, Bishop Huntington referred again to this incident 
in an article entitled ' From Puritanism — Whither ? ' * 

" So the cruel Christianity presented itself to a very 
juvenile observer, somehow, doubtless by the saintli- 
ness of the victim, without twisting him into an infidel. 

"Instances of this sort were neither very common 
nor extremely rare. It is unfair to judge a theological 
scheme, any more than a tool in the hand, merely by 
its capacity for abuse. We are put here upon the task 
of defining the effect of a religious institution and party 
in New England, at the beginning of this century, on 
a mind in search of a Christian faith and home. The 
defects were not those of unprincipled intolerance or 
indifference to truth, but of narrowness and dispro- 
portion. It is impossible that any denomination built 
on a dogma or group of dogmas, and not on the fact of 
the life of God manifest in the person and acts of Christ, 
should represent Christianity. 

" It may revere the son of God in one or more of His 
1 The Forum, June, 1886. 



16 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

offices or characters, but it cannot receive Him as He 
chose to call Himself, the son of Man. It cannot re- 
unite the life of the human race with God's life. It 
cannot bear the test of comprehensiveness or Catholi- 
city, or cover the experience of all souls and nations, or 
satisfy the wants of integral man, in spirit, mind, body. 
No great Christian cause has lived on a subjective 
revelation, or a sentiment, or an idea, or the issue of a 
process of ratiocination. Congregational Orthodoxy 
believed in Christ, but it was Christ in the past and the 
future and in Heaven, not where living and tempted 
men most need Him." 

This retrospect was in the calmer mood of age. As 
time passed much was softened in connection with the 
painful experience. In his last years Rev. Dan Hunt- 
ington and his daughter Bethia were received into full 
participation with the Russell Church in Hadley, 
where under a milder construction of its tenets the old 
clergyman enjoyed the privileges of the Orthodox 
communion in which he had been reared. 

In "Anniversary week," May, 1831, then just twelve 
years old, Frederic accompanied his parents and a 
sister to the city, himself driving the family " carryall " 
and pair of horses, a leisurely journey of a hundred 
miles. One object was to attend the Governor's elec- 
tion, an occasion at which Rev. Mr. Huntington him- 
self had preached the sermon in 1821, as he had in 
Connecticut in 1814. One of the sons, John Whiting, 
was at this time a student at Harvard. The mother 
attended the philanthropic gatherings, especially 
meetings in the interest of the Peace Movement and 
Abolitionist agitation. The father took his family to 
see his ministerial friends, among them the venerable 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 17 

Eliphalct Porter, of Roxbury, and his young colleague, 
Rev. George Putnam. Social visits were paid at the 
house of William Parsons, an eminent merchant resid- 
ing on the corner of South and Summer Streets, and a 
connection by marriage; and to Major Thomas Melvill, 
in Green Street, who had been a member of the Boston 
u Tea Party " and is said to have found some of the tea 
in his boots afterwards. He has been remembered as 
the last man in the community to wear smallclothes. 

The party returned to Hadley by way of Connecticut, 
making a stay among the large circle of Huntington 
kinsfolk in Lebanon. There were relatives in Norwich 
also and among them was Carey Throop, an uncle of 
Rev. Dan Huntington. One of his townsmen recalls 
that when a boy he was crossing Mr. Throop's field 
early one Lord's day and, meeting the old gentleman, 
inquired of him if he had seen anything of a swarm of 
bees passing in that direction the night before. Uncle 
Carey drew himself up to his full and not inconsider- 
able height, and answered solemnly, "Young man, I 
am surprised that you should speak of such a thing 
as bumble-bees on Sunday morning." 

But in spite of the serious views of life, and the then 
unrelaxed Puritan observances, family intercourse on 
the farm of "Forty Acres," as it was originally called, 
was happy and cheerful. The remoteness of situation, 
and perhaps some differences in religious sympathy 
with their neighbors, threw the children upon them- 
selves greatly for diversion. The only playfellows 
were their cousins at "Pine Grove," the large house 
lately erected by Major Phelps on the southern portion 
of the paternal estate. Of the ten brothers and sisters, 
five were still at home when Frederic began to study 



18 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Latin with his sister Bethia. Three sons went to Har- 
vard, the others to schools or academies in neighbor- 
ing towns; the girls were sent to the famous Seminary 
in Troy, the founder and head, Mrs. Emma Willard, 
being a friend and connection. Her sister, Mrs. Lincoln, 
also an accomplished educator, married John Phelps, 
a cousin of Mrs. Huntington. 

One of the daughters, visiting her sister Elizabeth, 
then married to George Fisher and residing in Oswego, 
received from Frederic the following letter, which gives 
a little glimpse of the family life. 

Hadley, Jan. 14, 1834. 

To Mary Dwight Huntington, Oswego, N. Y. 

Dear Mary : — Your letter to Theodore we received 
to-day. 

In speaking of the Concert you do not inform us 
whether you performed the Solo that you were requested 
to or not; though perhaps we ought to infer that you 
did, as a thing of course. I am truly glad ■that you have 
an opportunity of exercising your singing powers, as 
you appear to have in the choir of Mr. Parker. Last 
evening Father and Mother went to Amherst, and 
made Dr. Humphrey a visit. It was a very pleasant 
day and evening, indeed we have had fine weather for 
almost a fortnight until to-day. It commenced raining 
this morning and continues to do so yet, so that this 
deep snow settles, and evaporates quite fast at present. 
It must be a great disappointment to many, for Ed- 
ward who was here last evening, told us that he was 
expecting with about sixty others of the male and fe- 
male gentry of Northampton to go to Springfield for a 
sleigh ride this afternoon; the young people of the 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 19 

Upper Mills also were expecting to make up an excur- 
sion of pleasure to "Muddy Brook," but their enjoy- 
ments are nipped or rather dissolved, I am afraid, by 
this unexpected rain. 

Mr. Harding called here last night in the evening and 
remained till ten o'clock this morning. He has a horse 
that will match with our grey colt and wishes to have 
Pa and Theophilus go out there this week and see if 
they can trade so as to bring them together. He wished 
them to take with them Bethia or Ma. If it should be 
pleasant perhaps they will go. Last Sunday we almost 
all of us attended meeting at the Mills. Mr. Payson 
delivered two excellent sermons, one upon " The Good 
Man," the other upon "Covering Sin." 

Theophilus and Theodore intend to worship at Had- 
ley this year with Father. Mother, Bethia and myself 
intend to go to Northampton when it is convenient. 

Uncle Phelps is filling the new ice-house with ice 
from the river. Edward last week made the family 
here a present of a patent cooking-stove like that which 
Charles has in his kitchen. It is furnished with a large 
tin cover to bake under; a tin oven made for the purpose 
to set under it and roast in ; a boiler to boil clothes 
in and other boilers; a small crank turns any part of 
it near the fire that may be wished. It is perfectly con- 
venient for every purpose of cooking and a large armful 
of wood one and a half feet long will warm the kitchen 
as warm as the sitting room. The settle stands before 
the old fireplace. You can hardly imagine how differ- 
ently the kitchen appears from what it used to. 

We hear frequently from William. All well as usual 
and unite with sending love with your brother, 

F. D. Huntington. 



20 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

At the end of the letter is written in the mother's 
handwriting : — 

Dear Mart : — If you find yourself in need of any 
article of dress and your purse has become empty, let 
us know, and we will endeavor to supply you with cash, 
for though we have nothing to waste in ornament and 
superfluities, thanks to our great Benefactor, we have 
enough to make us comfortable. Far more of this 
world's goods than was sufficient for Him who came 
from heaven to show us the way thither. 

Surely we may well blush at the shameful distance, at 
which we follow Him. 

With much love to parents and children, and dear 
Mary, 

from her mother, 

E. W. H. 

The gray colt referred to was probably matched, for 
a pair of white horses grew old in the service and on one 
occasion took Mr. and Mrs. Huntington on a journey 
to Oswego and back, to visit their daughter and her 
family there. The barouche in which they drove was 
preserved until a later generation, large, roomy, and 
with steps to let down and fold up again, the delight of 
the grandchildren. The ride of five miles to North- 
ampton, to church or visiting, was more of a circum- 
stance in those days than now. In Frederic's childhood 
a bridge, with its curved floor of ancient pattern, 
spanned the Connecticut River at the south end of the 
farm, led across to Hatfield, and so by a good road to 
the county town. But this bridge was burned and 
never replaced, and for many years after travelers were 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 21 

obliged to take a ferry at the end of Hadley street. A 
Boston and Albany stage passed through the village 
to Northampton and thence westward, and by this 
and the Erie Canal visits between the households in 
Hadley and Oswego were exchanged. 

The boys' occupations were various. They made ex- 
periments in the culture of bees and they seem to have 
attempted the cultivation of peanuts, — sending orders 
for them and for horse-chestnuts in the letters to Bos- 
ton, which traveled then usually by private hand, and 
getting them fulfilled through some obliging neighbor. 

The "Farmer's Almanac" was eagerly welcomed 
and read. Regular work out of doors was expected of 
them and this was seldom distasteful to Frederic, who 
all his life recalled with enthusiasm the days spent on 
the slopes of the hills, on the breezy meadows, or in the 
woods in winter. 

In cold w T eather he helped in cutting and drawing the 
firewood for the house, often taking entire charge of 
two "yoke" of oxen, driving the teams down the 
mountain side, — unloading and returning. At one 
time it was bark for the tannery which he hauled daily 
from the clearing to Fort River at the south. Years 
later, making an address before an agricultural so- 
ciety, Mr. Huntington said: "I rode plough, as they 
say, a good many times round before I ever stepped into 
a pulpit, — retaining to this day an especially clear 
recollection of being pitched over the horse's neck 
once, in a great quagmire, at the foot of Mt. Warner 
yonder, — a sort of ' slough of despond ' which my 
father, with no despondency at all, but notions that 
seemed to me, at the time, excessively Utopian, insisted 
on converting into an arable cornfield, making us boys 






FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



partial instruments in the work; and long before I 
began to dig roots in the Greek Grammar, under Pro- 
fessor Tyler, in term-time, I used to weed ruta-bagas in 
vacation." 

His earliest letter to a sister, at the age of nine, says : 
"To-day I have been ploughing the piece under the 
bank with the black colt alone." 

Besides this active physical exercise the deeper as- 
pects of nature undoubtedly made an impression upon 
the contemplative mind of a boy developing under 
such influences. He ever counted it one of the chief 
blessings in his lot that the wonderful beauty of the 
valley of his birth and the graceful and imposing fea- 
tures of its scenery were so familiar to him. The dis- 
tinct outlines and forest-clad summits of Mount Hol- 
yoke and Tom on the south, of Toby and Sugarloaf on 
the north; the long ranges of hills rising one behind 
another to the westward across the winding Connecti- 
cut; the luxuriant loveliness of the meadows, with their 
magnificent elms ; the surpassing splendor of the sun- 
sets and the majesty of the thunder clouds ; — all these 
bred in him an abiding love of the nobler features of 
the world around. Throughout his life his intense 
enjoyment of such scenes amounted to a passion. 

In contrast to this existence of enjoyment, and per- 
haps owing to a sensitive disposition, there were phases 
of morbid apprehension unusual in a child, but which, 
in the form of nervous imagination connected with 
disease, occured at periods throughout his life. When 
only twelve years old he was possessed in this way, and 
replying to what was perhaps good-natured raillery 
from his brother at college, he says : — 

"Your subject for me to write to you upon, I think 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 23 

was, ' What is the best cure for Hypo ? ' I do not think 
there is any use in trying to get rid of it before the time 
comes." 

His mother calls these "fidgety fears," but they 
were so real to the child that he never forgot the dis-. 
tress he suffered in the spring of 1830. It took one 
form as a dread of being poisoned, especially through 
food which might have been contaminated with his 
touch, a premonition of the infection of microbes, then 
probably unheard of. After he had washed his hands 
before meals, his little sister, knowing his apprehension, 
would open all the doors for him until he reached the 
table. This especial folly was cured by heroic treat- 
ment. One evening at supper, he had consumed the 
usual tale of doughnuts prompted by a boy's healthy 
appetite, tucking under the rim of the tea-tray, as too 
fatal to swallow, each end which he had held in his 
fingers. By some chance his mother became aware of 
the expedient for avoiding contamination. She imme- 
diately filled a cup with milk, broke into it the rejected 
food and bade him eat it. With only a mournful 
"Mother, I will do it, but I shall die," he obeyed. 

It was, of course, the end of this particular phase of 
the malady, but perhaps in consequence, his parents 
in the summer of 1831 gave him an opportunity for 
change of scene by accepting an invitation for him to 
visit his brother, and take lessons in Latin and math- 
ematics, in the neighboring town of Northampton. The 
eldest son had settled there, opened a law office and 
begun that honorable career, which was summed up in 
later times by Judge Hoar, in his reminiscences of the 
Anti-Slavery party, where he speaks of " Charles Hunt- 
ington, the Judge, the Advocate, the stainless gentle- 



24 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

man." This young man had married early a daughter 
of Elisha Hunt Mills, one of the conspicuous citizens 
of the town, and not long after built himself a house 
at the foot of Round Hill. It was through this home, 
in what was one of the most delightful towns in New 
England, the seat of unusual culture, taste, and refine- 
ment, that the young people of the Hadley farm found 
their pleasantest social connections. 

But at the age of twelve Frederic was too young to 
realize anything but the absence from his home. He 
was pitifully unhappy. In a letter to Ins sister Mary at 
school her mother says: "When we left Frederic he 
looked very sorry. He feels it a great evil that he can- 
not live at home, but your Pa has told him that it may 
be possible he may not have to stay there longer than 
you are at Troy and that has given him some relief." 
Writing himself to Mary he says of his homesickness, 
" I find that the best way to get rid of it is to keep em- 
ployed about something." 

Before many months passed his parents decided 
wisely not to insist upon a separation which really 
brought suffering. In July his brother John Whiting 
died suddenly at home, a few days before the time set 
for him to graduate from Harvard College. The young 
man had shown great promise, was of an elevated and 
serious disposition, and seems to have had an unusual 
influence in his brief career. 

In a letter to their mother from Cambridge, seven 
years after, Frederic writes : — 

" I met lately with a very affectionate and touching 
tribute to the character of our Whiting. Among what 
are called the Bowdoin Prize Dissertations, bound and 
preserved in the College Library, is one by Bellows, 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 25 

now of New York, written during the year after he 
graduated. On a blank leaf of the manuscript he had 
written the following words: — 

" ■ In secret memorial of a man of undefiled heart, 
sound mind and gentle manners, cut off in the dew of 
youth devoted to God and usefulness, — This humble 
effort of one w T hom he loved and labored to benefit is 
dedicated to the memory of John Whiting Huntington, 
classmate and chum of the author.' 

" It implies, what I suppose is very true, that Mr. 
Bellows ascribes his first religious impressions, that 
have led him to his present useful and distinguished 
position, 1 to the example and efforts of his room- 
mate." 

Up to 1831 the education of the young children had 
been at home under the supervision of father, mother, 
and an older sister. Later in life Frederic expressed 
his gratitude for the care thus given him, and attributed 
largely to it his love of study and of letters. Learning 
was a pleasure and he was early inspired with a desire 
to become wise, not for the sake of competition, for 
there was none, but for its own reward. It was the 
habit of the entire family to spend their leisure hours 
in reading. They were supplied with the best books of 
the day and with standard literature. He says himself: 

"I began to read Channing's and Dewey's and 
Martineau's writings when I was a child. Living in the 
country, I read them often in the open air, and they 
are associated with running streams in the woods, with 
apple blossoms, with clear hill tops, and with wide spaces 
of earth and sky. To these thoughtful and devout au- 
thors I have always felt more indebted, perhaps, for 
1 Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D. 



26 FREDERIC DAX HUNTINGTON 

first arousing the life of my mind and heart than to 
any others, except the inspired men of the Bible, and 
Sir Thomas Browne and Burke and De Quincey. It 
was because, like many others. I found them when I 
seemed to need them. Parted from their guidance 
afterwards, in interpreting some of the great meanings of 
revelation and history, I yet have never forgotten 
my unpaid obligation." 

When Mary and Frederic entered school they at- 
tended Hopkins Academy in Hadlev, generally walking 
the two miles morning and evening and earning their 
luncheon. This historic seat of learning was founded 
from a fund left by Gov. Edward Hopkins of Connecti- 
cut, whose wife was the daughter of David Yale, for 
whose grandson. Elihu Yale. Yale College was named. 
The apportionment of the bequest to the town of Had- 
ley was made through the influential settler, William 
Goodwin, for whom the present village library is 
named. The instruction in the academy was good. 
Rev. Dan Huntington was at one time a preceptor, as 
were also other men of learning, and young people 
from neighboring towns were attracted thither in con- 
sequence. It was there that Frederic made his prepa- 
ration for college, with but one intermission which 
occured in the following manner: In the summer of 
1834, in a public examination, the boy lost his pre- 
sence of mind during a recitation from Cicero's Orations 
and his memory suddenly forsook him. One of the 
blunders he always vividly recalled, was in the nomina- 
tive singular of the substantive It gibus. After several 
mistakes and guesses he gave it up. to the great morti- 
fication of his father, one of the examiners. Such a 
dereliction in a pupil who had been well grounded in 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 27 

Latin was deemed to merit pointed rebuke, and Fred- 
eric was told that he might pass the next few months 
as a merchant's clerk in the employ of his brother 
Edward in Northampton. This edict implied a for- 
feiture, perhaps forever, of a scholar's life, and was a 
severe blow to an ambitious and really studious 
youth. But after having submitted to the discipline 
and proved his attachment to the classics by devot- 
ing his leisure hours to Virgil, he was allowed to come 
home in November and for the rest of the winter his 
father himself superintended his lessons. If this was 
too stern dealing with the result of a momentary 
embarrassment, it nevertheless had the effect of en- 
hancing the value of learning <io the boy, who found 
himself deprived of the opportunities hitherto freely 
accorded him. His purposes were concentrated and 
after a further term at the academy, with some 
exercises in algebra and Greek under his brother 
William, then practicing medicine in Hadley, he 
was easily fitted for entrance to Amherst College in 
July. 

Before we chronicle his departure from the home 
which in its associations was to be endeared to him 
for sixty years more, we pause to give its picture in his 
own words written in old age. 

"The outward frame and scene survive still, with 
nearly unchanged features, in a New England valley; 
domicile, old-fashioned furniture, open fireplaces and 
andirons, the clock that has ticked the seconds of a 
Century and closed many a frolic of children with 
the stroke of nine; garret, cellar, Indian relics, elm 
trees, garden, well, orchard, cornfields; the brook 
behind the hill, the indoor heirlooms of six genera- 



28 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

tions, all invested and hallowed with traditions and 
reminiscences that repeople every nook and corner 
of the place and bring tears to the eyes." 

Even the homely toil, performed as it was in those 
days by mothers and daughters bred in dignity and 
refinement, assisted by handmaids reared in the house, 
had its aroma of poetry. Writing, when a Boston 
clergyman, to his sister, in remonstrance against some 
proposed household changes, he said : " But as to the 
old kitchen and all that, — that is a matter that 
touches me in a vital point. Can it be that I am to 
see those dear old nooks and corners in their wonted 
position never again ? Potash kettle ! Buttery ! Milk- 
room! Precious, venerable, beloved, hallowed by a 
thousand tender associations and sacred recollections. 
Am I to see you no more as you were, wearing the 
familiar and homelike look, — forever ? 

" I tell you, Bethia, it is a very serious matter. Did 
I not use to take sweet and holy counsel with the best 
and purest of mothers, by the twilight, many and 
many a time, in that shady old milk-room ? Milton 
may talk about the dim religious light of Gothic 
cloisters; it never was half as impressive as the light 
that used to shine in at sundown, not exactly, to be 
sure, ' thro' storied windows richly dight,' but through 
panes stained with age as art could not do it. I say 
again nobody has any business to meddle with those 
walls." 

The festival of Thanksgiving, enjoyed by a large 
family, on the generous scale with which the house- 
hold had always been maintained, was one which he 
never ceased to recall with pleasure. The preparation, 
for days, the initiatory feast of chicken pie the night 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 29 

before, the bewildering variety spread on the festal 
board, the roasting turkey suspended from the big 
fireplace, the table full of sons and daughters gath- 
ered to give thanks — he held " a picture of that de- 
parted jubilee among the treasures of a grateful 
memory." 

It was a home of which religion was the mainspring. 
The mother especially felt an obligation to keep fasts 
as w r ell as feasts, although the strict following of Cal- 
vinistic observances had been set aside. Her daily 
intercourse with the Almighty inspired the round of 
care, and with prayer was mingled praise. Sunday 
evenings she would sing hymns, to the accompani- 
ment of a guitar. 

In the records of the Evangelical Association of a 
neighboring county it appears that its members met 
at the house of the Rev. Mr. Huntington of Hadley. 
The morning sessions w^ere held at sunrise. This little 
knot of earnest believers, following a way which seemed 
to them to lead into fuller truth, thus imitated the 
example of the primitive Christians. At one of these 
gatherings at Northampton in 1827, " Mr. Huntington 
acted as Moderator and opened the meeting with 
prayer. Mr. R. W. Emerson preached from the text, 
'Pray without ceasing.' " 

In a letter to his wife from New York Mr. Hun- 
tington says : — 

" I was told, I suppose it was to inflate my vanity, 
that yesterday I had a fuller house than had ever at- 
tended the preaching of any other man in it, except 
Dr. Channing. I presume it was accident. I have not 
the most distant thought that the preaching of the old 
Hadley plough-jogger can have in it anything very 



30 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

enchanting in the City of New York, and why I am 
here I absolutely know not. But here I am, and 
whatever I am and whatever I have I will endeavor 
to devote to the service of my blessed Lord and 
Master." 

In 1835, at sixteen years of age, Frederic was ad- 
mitted, by the Rev. Oliver Stearns, into communion 
with the Church of Christ, in Northampton, where he 
had been brought up under the preaching of the Rev. 
E. B. Hall, for many years the family pastor. This 
step was taken deliberately. It had been often affec- 
tionately and solemnly urged by his mother, whose 
constant prayer for her children, that their souls might 
be awakened to the spiritual life, was answered in the 
case of every one ; all but the youngest daughter, who 
died at the age of thirteen, becoming open witnesses 
to their faith. 

Frederic was from his earliest infancy a child of the 
covenant, brought up as a member of the visible 
church, and this act of communion with the Christian 
body in which he had been nurtured was natural and 
harmonious. That it proved a strong security we have 
his own testimony, though his temperament and dis- 
position led him easily towards moral excellence. 
Doubtless his high purposes were largely due to the 
fact that he lived much in the companionship of older 
persons, themselves of elevated character. This in- 
fluence, of which he was aware, led him to the pre- 
paration of a manual for teachers which has been 
probably more widely read than any other of his pub- 
lished writings. In " Unconscious Tuition" he em- 
bodied his own experiences as well as his established 
theories on an important side of education. In his own 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 3] 

home neither corporal nor any degrading punishment 
was found necessary; the teachings pervading it 
were good examples and pure conversation, the com- 
panionship of gentle sisters, honorable brothers, a 
wise father, and a dear and holy mother whose 
intercessions never ceased to be offered for her 
children. 

Notwithstanding all these safeguards, no youth 
who is allowed any liberty can grow up without some 
exposure to evil. One summer, an evil-minded com- 
panion was thrown much in the boy's way and this 
and one or two similar experiences in college caused 
him to look back with repugnance to what came near 
becoming sources of hidden corruption. But owing 
to the more beneficent influences over him he came out 
of the trial with a strengthened integrity. 

The question as to the choice of a college was left 
undecided up to the last moment. Elizabeth Hunt- 
ington, who had already sent six sons out into the 
world, showed an unusual reluctance to part with this 
one. It might have been that the loss of his little sister 
Catherine caused her to cling more closely to her 
youngest child. But she dreaded to have him exposed 
to new impressions in a distant place. One who prays 
for her loved ones with such constant and personal 
intercessions as hers is gifted with deep spiritual 
insight, but there was much that was especially sym- 
pathetic in mother and son. He had inherited that 
longing to get away from one's fellows which sent his 
great-grandfather, Charles Phelps, from the busy town 
up to the Vermont hills. Frederic said himself of his 
boyhood, that although living in the companionship 
of others he spent days in a sense of solitude. These 






FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



moods went with him through life and gave him his 
strong distaste to publicity, to crowds and functions 
and external expressions of the deep realities.. The 
austerity of a long line of Puritan forefathers had left 
its impress. And to one who watched with a mother's 
solicitude, the first contact of such a nature with 
the great world of humanity was a critical time. It 
was not strange that she desired to keep a lad of 
sixteen under her own influence until he became more 
mature. , 

Therefore, after some deliberation, his parents de- 
cided that he should enter Amherst College, not more 
than three miles distant. His three elder brothers had 
all attended Harvard College, and the tendencies of the 
family were so distinctively liberal that the choice 
of a stronghold of orthodox congregational theology 
seemed unusual. However it may be, his own love of 
home coincided with the choice, and gave him for four 
years longer that free enjoyment of rural life which 
ever distinguished him. At the same time his social 
instincts were so naturally expanded, under the genial 
associations of college life, that the periods of painful 
isolation of spirits from which he suffered in his boy- 
hood seemed to pass away. 

The day after the determination was made, he was 
examined, by special permission, and admitted to 
Amherst College, with the class of 1839. He passed 
the three months of subsequent leisure, largely on the 
farm, in out-of-door wo A, which was ever a congenial 
occupation, in company with his brothers, Theophilus 
and Theodore. 

A few days after his final departure from home his 
mother writes : — 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 33 

Elm Valley, Oct. 3, 1835, 

Thursday evening. 

To Frederic D. Huntington, Student, Amherst 

College. 

My dear Frederic: — I am going to do what I recom- 
mend to you to do, keep a sort of record of the events 
of the day; and when I have a convenient opportunity 
send it to you, that you may not lose all knowledge of 
us, or interest in us. We have visited you several 
times to-day in spirit, and in conversation, and I ima- 
gine you have arranged your furniture, and swept and 
dusted your room and find yourself with your room- 
mate very comfortably situated, and ready and able 
to go on with your studies to advantage. I am quite 
happy in the persuasion ; because we read in the Book 
of books, this direction and promise united: " Commit 
thy way unto the Lord and he shall give thee the desire 
of thy heart; in all thy ways acknowledge Him and 
He shall direct thy paths." 

The two brothers have gone into town to collect, 
if they can, seventy persons who will be willing to 
unite in forming a singing-school to be taught by Mr. 
Kingsley. Your father is quite down with a cold, is 
now sitting by the kitchen fire to avoid the chattering 
of five females; yes, five without your mother; by 
this you will understand that Mary and Harriet Mills 
returned before dinner with Theophilus who went this 
morning to Northampton on business. 

Saturday evening: half past ten. All gone to bed in 
peace and comfort; what obligations are we under to 
our guide by day and our guard by night ! the pillar of 
cloud and the pillar of fire that attend us, tho' too often 
unnoticed. 



34 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

We miss you often at our social meals, and our 
social fireside; at the morning and evening sacrifice, 
and also as we gather around our Saturday evening 
table, with our religious books, and elevating employ- 
ment. But thanks to God, we would not mourn your 
absence; we may hope for a meeting in this life. Some 
of our members have reached the end of their journey, 
when it was but just begun; and we are permitted to 
think of them as the inhabitants of a world of purity 
and peace and love, where no discordant passions 
agitate the bosom, and no doubts or fears interrupt the 
Communion of the blessed society — May the Lord 
of the Sabbath give us all a Sabbath blessing! 

On Saturday afternoon our girls, Harriet, Eliza- 
beth, 1 and Mary visited Mt. Warner. For want of a 
better conveyance they rode with Theodore part of the 
way in the old red wagon. Elizabeth came home much 
delighted with the refreshing sight of the Colleges and 
particularly of the door of the Chapel, as she thought 
possibly you might be standing in it. Wednesday 
forenoon: This morning your father, Theophilus, and 
Ben have gone to the mountain to pick up apples. 
Theodore stayed at home, is husking corn, I believe. 
Your father and mother last night had an invitation 
to drink tea this evening with widow Major Smith, in 
company with Doctor Brown and lady. This morning 
Mrs. Doctor Porter sent a note requesting our com- 
pany and Bethia's at their house to meet friends at 
tea to-day, — what a pity, as calls of this kind are so 
rare, that there should be two for the same time! 

I intend to leave this at Dr. Porter's store, to be sent 
to you. I hope soon to receive a long letter from you. 
1 Elizabeth Fisher — a granddaughter. 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH $5 

I feel a kind of satisfaction in the tho't that your writ- 
ing desk is the same which was used by your brother, 
who is now a glorified spirit, and is perhaps permitted, 
as he himself hoped might be the case, to witness your 
faithful efforts in duty, and even assist you in the 
arduous work. 

With the most earnest desire for your happiness 
and improvement, 

I am as ever your affectionate mother, 

Elizabeth. 

In February Frederic received his first letter from 
his father. 

" Why may I not have the pleasure of writing a little 
letter ? But this is a pleasure, I believe, which I have 
never yet had. And though I do not remember that you 
have ever asked me to write, I have not a single doubt 
but you will be just as glad to have me. Where there 
is a well-regulated affection, such as I hope subsists 
among the several branches of our family, formality, 
jealousy, distrust, and indifference can have no place. 
And because, in your absence from us, Providence has 
kindly cast your lot not far from home, am I, on this 
account, never to have the pleasure of writing you or 
receiving a letter from you ? This would be making a 
wrong use of the indulgence. xAnd though I hear no 
bad account of you, in your absence — no idleness, pro- 
fligacy, insubordination, vice of any kind, nor want of 
scholarship, nor even of heresy, I cannot persuade 
myself that this is any reason why I should not now 
and then take pen in hand, and be a little sociable, if 
it is only to encourage you in the way of well doing. 
Mount Warner, with its formidable heights, indeed 



36 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

may lie between us ; but even these may be surmounted. 
Tho'ts are free as air. We may send them over moun- 
tains, across oceans and deserts, to the ends of the earth, 
to the stars and to the end of time, in an instant." 

The sly allusion to heresy was characteristic of the 
old gentleman, whose turn for pleasantry was far more 
in evidence than any really controversial spirit. In 
point of fact Frederic's position as the only Unitarian, 
with the exception of his roommate, in the whole 
college, was never in any way a marked one. So far 
from finding himself an object of suspicion, he always 
expressed gratitude for the circumstances of his college 
career. The fact that in his religious opinions he stood 
alone had a tendency to redouble his efforts towards 
scholarship and exemplary conduct. He was always 
treated with courtesy by the faculty. After the first 
months his Sundays were largely passed with his 
family, when he accompanied them to their place of 
worship in Northampton. 

On the other hand, a few years after, he refers in a 
letter to his mother to a threatened act of neighbor- 
hood oppression, and the playful allusions are an evi- 
dence of the good-humored spirit of tolerance for 
ecclesiastical ostracism which prevailed in the house- 
hold. When the new bridge was erected over the 
Connecticut a question arose as to collecting tolls on 
Sunday. To the Huntington family, who drove back 
and forth each week to church across the river, the 
exaction seemed unnecessary and arbitrary. 

Undoubtedly with the village people this remon- 
strance was less to be considered because of the feeling 
excited by having a household of some prominence 
pass the meeting-house and go on to an alien place of 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 37 

worship. A contemporary used to recall to her grand- 
children seeing the large carriage drive down the 

o o o 

West street and turn into the Northampton road, and 
it aroused a sense of religious differences which in 
those days were far more keenly deplored than at 
present. 

"You speak of Colonel , and his little-souled 

coadjutors. Probably he feels, when he has turned 
upon us the key of that toll-gate, like another St. Peter 
who has laudably locked out a reprobate from Paradise. 
There is a bridge that Milton speaks of — 

" * Of wondrous length, 

From hell continued reaching to the orb 

Of this frail world; which the spirits perverse 

With easy intercourse pass to and fro. 

— except whom God and good angels guard by special grace.' 

" For this bridge I presume he would admire to give 
us a contract gratis, and probably he thinks it is the 
only one we have a right to pass. However, as you 
say, if we trust Providence perhaps he will provide a 
passage way, when 'the pure keen air,' 'the piercing 
spirit of the North' shall visit us unjust as the just, 
'and the incrusted surface shall upbear our steps.' 
Why might not we give ice a new name, and call it 
the heretics' bridge ? " 

His father continues his epistle, filling three pages 
with excellent advice. 

"In the multiplicity of your engagements, give 
yourself time to think. Think a great deal and think 
closely — when you read, lay by your book and think 
what you have been over — think what you have 
heard and seen, in the common intercourse of life." 

The system of instruction in that day was not 






38 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

adapted to lead the mind from the technicalities of 
grammar and text-book to the higher play of thought 
and imagination. In later reminiscences the student 
of the "thirties" was wont to describe the barren 
and mechanical field on which classical literature and 
history were pursued. Not a word of illustration or 
reference was added to the subject to arouse that 
interest which gives so largely the charm to a modern 
lecture room. 

At an alumni dinner Dr. Huntington told the tale 
of one unlucky instructor. Speaking of the college he 
says : " From the first breath of its infancy Amherst 
College has never tasted a whiff of any other than New 
England air. If foreign ideas have ever arrived and 
dismounted at this door, it has fared with them a good 
deal as it did with the polite and amiable French 
master that came, in the summer of '36, to teach our 
class, when we were sophomores, the French pronuncia- 
tion. There were two windows and they always hap- 
pened to be accidentally open, on the north side of the 
recitation room, and from the moment the roll was 
called a silent process of waste began on that end of 
the seats, till, somehow, when the hour was up, through 
the doorway along with the unobservant and smiling 
tutor, only ' three angels issued ' where threescore 
'went in.' " 

The resource of the more active intellects was found 
in debate, then very popular, and in the different 
societies. Among these were the "Alexandrian," of 
which he was president, the "Chi Delta Theta," the 
" N. L. D.," and the " Alpha Delta Phi." To the latter 
Frederic's allegiance was strong through life, and in 
his last will and testament he bequeathed his pin, with 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 39 

its insignia, to a daughter. Young men, members of 
the fraternity, who made themselves known to him 
were most cordially received. It happened more than 
once, in later years at the Hadley homestead, that 
students, paddling down the river in a canoe, would 
beach their craft under the willows, and cross the 
meadows to call upon him, and he delighted to wel- 
come them in behalf of their alma mater. 

He was one of the editors of the periodical " Horae 
Collegianae," conducted by a committee of seniors. In 
that appeared in November, 1837, his first printed ar- 
ticle, entitled "The Hours of Life." Its heading w r as 
the quotation from a sun dial near Venice, " Horas 
non numero nisi serenas" — a sentiment which at- 
tracted the boy, and was ever characteristic of a taste 
which found its deepest satisfaction in tranquil con- 
templation, in the calm and soothing aspects of nature, 
in a social intercourse free from criticism and con- 
tention. 

In spite of the fact that he passed through the four 
years' curriculum without a mark in the scale of de- 
portment, for absence or any breach of discipline, he 
entered with zest into occasions of merriment and 
joined his companions in open-air diversions; not in 
those days athletic sports, but rambles along stream 
and through the woods, with gun or fishing rod. 
He formed acquaintance readily, and his quick sense 
of humor made him foremost in wit and chaff and 
repartee. 

His roommate, Dexter Clapp, was a man of rare 
loveliness of character. They attended the Hadley 
Academy together, were natives of the same county, 
entered the divinity school and the sacred ministry at 



40 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the same time, and maintained an unbroken intimacy 
until the death of Rev. Mr. Clapp, after pastorates 
at the Unitarian churches in Spring Street, Roxbury, 
and in Salem, Massachusetts. With such companions, 
his college time was delightfully passed. Generosity, 
good cheer, and loyalty to each other characterized the 
intercourse of the set of students thus brought to- 
gether, and proved a bond of affection in after-life. 

In the winter of 1837, following a fashion of the time, 
and partly for the purpose of helping meet his expenses, 
Frederic took a position as teacher in South Amherst. 
He had never attended a district school, and it was 
his first experience as an instructor, but he had a nat- 
ural taste for the occupation and experienced no diffi- 
culty in fulfilling what was required of liim. Like 
many others similarly placed, he learned, as he writes 
his sister Mary, that " boarding round is not the pleas- 
antest mode of living; rather precarious as respects 
reading, study, lodging, keeping, &c, &c." 

Here, as in college, his thoughts constantly turned 
to what in writing to Edward he speaks of as "home, 
the best place in my estimation in this little world." 

In another letter he says : — 

" Your epistle came to hand — I was at the time in a 
state of quiet, ' so to speak.' A few of us were gathered 
about the step-stones at the South door at eventide, a 
hallowed spot and hour, a few of us, I say — Cousin 
Eunice Phelps, sister Mary, Amelia Judkins and my- 
self. Speaking of Cousin Eunice, you probably recol- 
lect her a lady of talent and refinement — a teacher in 
Troy Female Seminary, spending a part of her vaca- 
tion with us. But perhaps you are wondering how I 
happen to be in Hadley. The fact is the term closes 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 41 

next Wednesday, Commencement Day. The exam- 
ination has closed already and we are free at that 
time, — we have a vacation of six weeks. 

"The Social Union Society, whose business it was 
to engage an orator this season, failed in their attempt, 
after applying to Webster, J. Q. Adams, Judge Story, 
Dr. Charming, Frelinghuysen, Dr. Cox, Mr. Sprague, 
George Bancroft and others, &c, &c. Too great 
men in my opinion, at least many of them. The term 
has been exceedingly pleasant — studies — conic sec- 
tions, Cicero de Oratore, Longinus, the book of Reve- 
lation and French, quite easy. Have been reading 
Irving's ' Rocky Mountains,' ' Sartor Resartus,' ' Red 
Rover.' " 

There were occasional social festivities in Amherst 
among families connected with the college. Among 
the friends of that time, and on terms of intimacy, 
Mr. Huntington enjoyed an acquaintance with Emily 
Dickinson, later distinguished as a poet. 

The centre of social and intellectual life in North- 
ampton at this time was the hospitable home of Judge 
and Mrs. Lyman. Their pastor afterwards said that 
there was no image in his mind of their front door 
ever being closed early or late. The daughter writes in 
her Recollections of Mrs. Lyman:" * "WTien winter 
came on, her thoughts would turn naturally to the two 
families of Huntington and Phelps, whose beautiful 
homes near Hadley were her delight in her summer 
hours, but whose young inmates she felt were sadly 
cut off from social privileges in the long winters." 

Together with his sisters, Frederic was a privileged 

1 Recollections of my Mother : Mrs. Anne Jean Lyman, of North- 
ampton, by Susan J. Lesley. 



42 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

guest, and frequently made one of the lively company 
gathered around the hostess, herself the wittiest of 
them all, a " queenly woman," as Mr. R. W. Emerson 
called her, "with flowing conversation, high spirits 
and perfectly at ease." 

Shakespeare readings were a favorite evening enter- 
tainment. " When my mother took the part of Portia, 
and Mr. Frederic D. Huntington, then a youth, that 
of Bassanio, in the 'Merchant of Venice,' every one 
that could came to listen." Frederic found another 
pleasant visiting place at the " Gothic Seminary " for 
young ladies, the objective point of many a sleigh 
ride and serenading party from Amherst College, eight 
miles away. He often refers to " the Trio," his special 
friends and correspondents, in letters to Mary, his 
"sister dear," while she was passing the winter at her 
brother's residence near by. On Round Hill, above 
the old town, flourished the famous school, which num- 
bered among pupils and teachers George Bancroft, 
John Lothrop Motley, and Benjamin Peirce. 

In the four years of a college course Frederic's tastes 
had ripened, his character had become formed. Con- 
centration of purpose, steady habits of industry, founda- 
tions of knowledge clear and defined, are gained in a 
curriculum such as he had pursued, and they are 
those which he himself ever set at a high value. His 
existence had been led in a narrow channel but it ran 
deep. In the small circle of his student life his chosen 
comrades were men like himself, pure, refined, intellec- 
tual, and to this association he owed much. The tender 
affections of his home encouraged his nature in un- 
reserved and spontaneous expression. Hard work on 
the farm in vacations toughened his frame and in- 



HERITAGE AND YOUTH 43 

spired him to healthy activity, while at college a regi- 
men which exacted daily attendance at chapel at six 
o'clock in the morning implanted a hardy indifference 
to bodily ease. Love of nature, fondness for books, 
high ideals, all these the boy had carried w r ith him 
when he entered Amherst College. He left its halls 
with an increased manliness, established principles, 
and the consciousness of intellectual power w r hich was 
acquired by his practice in waiting and debate. 

At the termination of the college course he suffered 
from the only serious illness of his life, an attack of 
typhoid fever. In spite of these hindrances and of the 
term spent in teaching, he easily held first rank in 
scholarship for four years and on graduation was 
awarded the highest appointment — an English oration 
with the valedictory address. This was largely pre- 
pared on a sick bed, during his convalescence, and 
delivered when he could barely stand, on Commence- 
ment Day, August 28th, 1839. His subject was 
"The Brotherhood of Scholars." Among the other 
parts were "Materials for Poetry in Hebrew His- 
tory," Richard Salter Storrs; "The Ideal of Art," 
Nathaniel Augustus Hewitt ; " Devotion to Principle, " 
Henry Grant DeForest. These three, who became the 
distinguished preacher, the founder of the Paulist 
Fathers, the influential citizen, together with Edward 
B. Gillett, later a lawyer of distinction in western 
Massachusetts, made up a group of intimate com- 
panions, whom Frederic Huntington held as valued 
friends all through his life. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DIVINE COMMISSION 
" It is the King's Highway we are in." 

The visitation of fever which passed over the Con- 
necticut Valley in the summer and autumn of 1839 
proved a grave infliction. Three in the Huntington 
household and four in the Phelps were attacked, and 
in each occurred a death. The long strain of anxiety 
and bereavement began with Frederic's illness. He 
was tenderly cared for by mother and sisters. As he 
lay in the darkened room, his parching thirst aroused 
memories and longings for the little brook flowing 
behind the hill across the road, and his soul sought for 
spiritual refreshment. During his convalescence there 
was leisure for reflection, for humble dependence and 
for a reconsecration to a religious life. It was then 
that his decision to enter the sacred ministry took 
definite shape, a calling to which in a measure he had 
looked forward from the beginning of his academic 
studies. With all his heart, earnestly and prayerfully, 
he set himself towards his chosen career. 

There was no question as to a choice in theological 
instruction. Although the religious influences of his 
boyhood were those of the "Standing Order"' of 
Orthodox belief, his parents had been banished from 
their former communion. Its ecclesiastical yoke 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION \r> 

seemed to him one of intolerance and bigotry. " Its 
aspect was uninviting. The culture was undeniably 
rude. There was an ever-increasing impression of 
unreality. Naturally the immense problem and mys- 
tery of the unseen world come before a youth in public 
worship, and at those points where the instituted 
ministration touched the chief things of life — birth, the 
act of uniting with the Church, wedlock, death and 
burial. Here this touch seemed to H. to be neither 
strong nor gentle. Again and again he asked himself, 
why this solemn performance might not be less rough 
and raw. Why should it not manifest in some fair mea- 
sure the glory of that realm where, as all were agreed, 
the perfection of beauty shines ? 

"In vacations and holidays he wandered with his 
fowling-piece in sweet-scented woods and along the 
river banks, wondering why all the deep meanings of 
splendor and shade, the living forms and harmonies, 
the innumerable and vivid witnesses to a beauty- 
loving Maker and order-loving Designer should be 
so far apart from that other thing called religion. Why 
should the weekly Sabbath shut the door on all these 
divine disclosures, and open a door into a bare room 
of unsightly woodwork and blank plastering without 
color, symmetry or significance ? " This he wrote 
fifty years later of his own boyhood. 1 

On the other hand the Unitarian doctrines seemed 
to him full of beauty and simplicity. He had been 
taught to reverence the Scriptures and commit them 
to memory, to worship the Saviour of mankind and 
trust His love and redeeming power. Like his mother 
he longed ardently for a creed which w T ould gather in 

1 The Forum, June, 1886. 






46 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



rather than exclude, which would win rather than de- 
nounce. " At Northampton, near by, two generations be- 
fore, Jonathan Edwards, though he so preached that the 
older people clutched the sides of the pews to keep 
thern from sliding into the pit, failed to persuade the 
young to live in chastity and decency, gave the attempt 
up in despair and went away leaving the town unclean." 

With the echoes of these imprecations still in his 
ears, witnessing a church discipline which demanded 
public penitential confessions of immorality, under a 
pulpit which omitted all ethical application, there was 
a charm in the contrast offered by Dr. Channing's 
gentle and exalted utterance on " the dignity of human 
nature." Frederic's convictions were the result of 
early impressions, of environment and reaction against 
ecclesiastical intolerance, but they were none the less 
seriously considered and prayerfully determined. One 
feeling was predominant when he sent his request for 
admission to the Harvard Divinity School, that his 
mind should be kept open towards all new light and 
all new truth which might enter it. 

In order to regain his strength after the weeks of 
fever he took a short excursion into Connecticut with 
his parents and elder sister, and then accepted a position 
to teach in the charming hill town of Warwick, in 
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border. The 
healthful air was one object, to aid his convalescence, 
and another a desire to provide for himself in the ex- 
penses of a professional course. He found a pleasant 
welcome from the Rev. Preserved Smith, a man emi- 
nent for his interest in education. 

Writing to his mother September 14th, 1839, 
Frederic says : — 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 47 

M Mr. Smith's family make me very welcome there 
and it seems more like home than any other place. He 
has a superior library, and music of a tolerable quality. 
The old lady is particularly kind, one of the earth's 
excellent. Of the scenery — the external world, as it 
strikes my fancy, I cannot say enough in the way of 
admiration. It is romantic, perhaps not beautiful yet 
the immediate vicinity is neat and cultivated. But the 
mountains, and they are close by, are glorious; their 
sides covered with dense green forests or rich pasturage, 
and their rounded tops much of the time covered with 
sunlight, while the valleys are shaded. I revel in the 
wildness of scenery mingled with the cultivated, morn- 
ing, noon and night. 

" By making regular divisions of my time I accom- 
plish out of school, no inconsiderable amount of read- 
ing, both in English, Latin and French, besides walk- 
ing, and rambling over the hills. I must not omit to 
tell you that I have been requested by the Franklin 
County Board of Education to give a lecture in four 
towns in this vicinity this Autumn. My fellow lecturers 
are Rev. Mr. Everett and Rev. Mr. Smith. I hesitated 
awhile on account of the ' tallness ' of my company, but 
they were urgent and I accepted. My subject is ' Moral 
Instruction.' " 

The pupils in the academy were bright young 
people, and the families with whom their schoolmaster 
thus became acquainted remained valued friends. 
Throughout his life the memories of those pleasant 
weeks in Warwick with the Pomeroys, Lathrops, 
Balls, Spooners, Wheelocks, and Russells were among 
those which he loved to recall, and in his later years 
Bishop Huntington made a journey each summer to 



48 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

renew with some of the few who remained, the friendly 
intercourse of the past. 

The month of October of the year 1839 proved a sad 
one for the home household. Nearly every member had 
suffered from the prevailing fever since midsummer. 

October 9th, his mother writes: "Thanks to the 
Father of our Mercies we are all able to walk about 
the house and to walk out of doors a little, and to ride 
out in this delightful Autumnal air, all excepting our 
dear Mary who has at last been obliged to quit her 
labors of love and care of the sick and herself to be the 
object of our solicitude." 

Five davs later the beloved sister was taken, as her 
mother writes of her, "rich in faith, rich in hope, 
rich in good works — her mind is clear as light. Her 
life how pure and excellent." 

To the favorite brother, whose aspirations she had 
often kindled, whose high-souled sympathy had 
responded to hers, it was an especial loss. In a letter to 
his brother Edward, October 21st, he says: "Is it not 
an evidence that our family affections are a part of 
religion that they are immortal — that while other 
objects lose their fascination and we seem to take a 
firmer hold on futurity, even then our attachment to 
each other becomes deeper ? " 

The term in Warwick closed before Thanksgiving. 
That annual festival Frederic passed with his family 
in their bereaved home and then joined the junior 
class at the Cambridge Theological School. 

J)ivinity College. 
Cambridge, Dec. 5th. 

My dear Mother : — Finding myself somewhat 

settled, I thus comply with your earnest request, and at 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 49 

the same time discharge a positive duty. The journey 
was not rendered very disagreeable by the tempestuous 
weather without, the cars being provided, as you 
know, with all the comforts of a parlor. Mr. Child l 
was extremely entertaining. His extensive travels, 
his close habits of observation, his peculiar views in 
politics and domestic economy, his thorough and 
practical education all combine to make him a man 
of remarkable powers in conversation. A truer aboli- 
tionist I suspect never lived. 

Here I am in old Harvard. It is the place of all 
places, for study. My room has a pleasant location, 
looking towards Charlestown and Boston — hand- 
somely furnished, carpeted and papered. The articles 
I brought are coming into very valuable use, though 
the sheets and pillowcases are superfluous, these 
being supplied by a benevolent sisterhood in Cam- 
bridge. All the men in the Hall seemed gratified to 
see me and things wear a very kindly aspect. The peo- 
ple I have seen are the families of Dr. Ware, Jun., 
and Mrs. Howe; I shall call at Prof. Pierce's soon. 
In one week's time I hope to stand square with my 
classmates in the studies — meantime I recite with 
the rest. I have just been to hear a lecture from Mr. 
Adam the distinguished Orientalist. 

As the season opened he describes Cambridge, 
"becoming with the rich foliage and full blossoms of 
the Spring a perfect Paradise. Do not allow your- 
selves any sort of anxiety respecting my habits of 
exercise. Our hall is surrounded by a very salubrious 

1 The husband of Lydia Maria Child, the well-known author of 
anti-slavery literature. 



50 FREDERIC DAN HUNTIXGTOX 






as well as a very spiritual atmosphere. And we do not 
allow ourselves here to forget the care of the physical 
man. A game of ball occupies us an hour or two of 
every day. Our gardens furnish us with plenty of 
amusement besides, and two or three walks weekly to 
Boston three and a half miles distant, and elsewhere, 
make up you will perceive, quite a little amount of 
labor. I never felt more vigor in my life. Even the sea 
winds, which to other dwellers on the coast are so dis- 
agreeable, are to me only fresh and pleasant breezes. 

" I find our secluded spot as calm, as favorable to 
study and devotion as ever. If one does not practice 
the virtues and draw near to God, here, where there 
is no collision of passions and so few of the temptations 
that beset our busy life, I don't know where he can 
expect to do it. In study, however, I am aware, there 
are dangers likewise — dangers that spring from the 
study itself. 

"May strength be given us to resist them success- 
fully. There is One who is strong and ready to give 
counsel and guidance and wisdom itself." 

The country youth had entered a new intellectual 
world. Through practice in the Amherst debating 
clubs, he had become a master in forensic oratory 
and his soul was fired with interest in the subjects of the 
day, especially the reforms which were then fresh in 
men's minds and dividing society into hostile camps. 
In the curriculum of the Divinity School Friday even- 
ing discussions on stated subjects were prescribed. 
Among the set of men who gathered there enthusiasm 
did not flourish. Educated in the calm and cultivated 
atmosphere of Boston Unitarianism, they felt no such 
hot antagonism to Calvinism as that which stirred one 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 51 

who was reared under its forbidding aspects. Hunt- 
ington distinguished himself among them, not only 
by the brilliancy of his style, but by his intense ardor 
for the side he espoused and his aptness in utterance. 
One element in the persuasiveness of his eloquent 
words was their fine intonation and perfectly modu- 
lated delivery. Long afterward a fellow student re- 
called vividly the impression of a summer afternoon, 
in the shade and stillness of Divinity Avenue, when 
sitting in his room he became spellbound, listening 
from across the hall to the rich musical inflections of 
Huntington's voice, as he read aloud one of Marti- 
neau's sermons. Successful as he then proved himself 
to be in extemporaneous speaking, it was a gift which 
in after years he held to be fraught with danger, and 
those whom he instructed in pulpit methods will recall 
the warnings, which increased in old age, against 
preaching without most careful preparation. 

In spite of his early readiness in disputation, he never 
show T ed a taste for controversy for its own sake. His 
chief endeavor was to state a subject clearly, and he 
cared less to overthrow an adversary, or to convince 
an audience by a process of reasoning, than to enforce 
by lucid and persuasive exposition the appeal which 
the truth makes to the conscience of men. In the in- 
tellectual atmosphere of the university the charm of 
literature cast its spell around him. He drank deep at 
the sources of noble English. Coleridge, De Quincey, 
and Carlyle w r ere the new writers who were influencing 
the minds of that generation, and their works impressed 
him profoundly. 

Much poetry, now familiar to us, was then a delight- 
fully new experience. To his mother, bereaved in the 



52 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

loss of the beloved daughter, he writes, asking her to 
accept a volume just published. 

"Its very title promises something like sympathy 
to the mourner. Yet, solemn as are the ' Voices of the 
Night,' they breathe comfort and encouragement for 
the labors of the day. Many of them I have committed 
to memory. In many respects I like the piece called 
'Flowers,' better than any other in the book." This 
was a favorite to the end of his life, and his fondness 
for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems and for 
William Cullen Bryant's, carrying with them early 
associations, never yielded to the great masters of 
verse, across the sea. From youth to old age, even to 
a few weeks before his end, "The Waning Moon" 
was frequently repeated with deep feeling. 

The first real contact of the young man with sinning 
souls came through the work in the city institutions, 
which was part of the training of the divinity students. 
This formed the only outlet for active sympathy, in a 
rather isolated course of study and reflection. 

Cambridge, April 4, 1840. 
To Edward Phelps Huntington. 

In that you study serenely and are absorbed thereby 
you resemble me. More and more I become careless of 
society. When I look at it I see little but a subject of 
pity or laughter. Having discovered where the springs 
are I hope by and by to make an effort to touch them. 

Criticism, Evidences, Pulpit Oratory, these are our 
regular topics at present. I am engaged just now in a 
course of Civil History — somewhat extended. The 
walks about here are delightful, and I improve them. 
Esq. Time is leading Spring in, in a very gentlemanly 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 53 

way, and though winter occasionally blusters and 
sprinkles a little snow in his laughing sister's pathway, 
she enervates him with one of her warm sighs. 

My room has a Western view — very fine, embra- 
cing the garden belonging to the school, the village of 
C, high grounds beyond with pleasant villas, and then 
the blue of the mountains melts into the softer blue of 
the sky that embraces them. The garden we have the 
privilege of cultivating. 

Our preaching is of the highest order. Of course 
we can find such hereabouts. Dr. Walker and Dr. 
Channing are the two great ones and Prof. Ware is not 
far behind. I usually attend in the City in the morning, 
as I instruct every Sabbath before the services in one 
of the Prisons. I find many characters there that in- 
terest me; humanity although in ruins, and Faith 
hidden under a mass of degradation. The men seem 
quite willing to learn and to think — the women are 
doubtful. 

The Transcendental Movement had its attractions. 
It is interesting to compare the impressions of the 
youth with the ripe judgment of the scholar fifty years 
later. 

Cambridge, May 16, 1840. 

My dear Mother: — In his late kind letter Father 
alludes to the agitation of new opinions that now so 
extensively occupies the attention of liberal Christians. 
It is emphatically the great Theological question of the 
day. It is not altogether, though too much, a question 
of words and quiddities. I am satisfied in my investi- 
gations thus far that there is truth, some new truth in 
this system of self-styled spiritualism. 



54 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Do not imagine I am at all beguiled with the tinsel, 
the pretended intellectual character of German Tran- 
scendentalism. I never was so far from that as at this 
moment. I only wish to make it a subject of fair, 
honest, intelligent inquiry. It will hardly do to call 
Transcendentalists fools, — for they number some 
able minds. I find that the system was first drawn out 
by Kant in Germany — the most unexceptionable 
man in doctrine that the sect has perhaps contained. 
In the hands of Fichte, Hegel and Schelling it became 
more atheistic. In England it has been more a subject 
of philosophy than of Theology. Coleridge like Goethe 
has interwoven it in his poetry. Carlyle acknowledges 
an idealistic Pantheism and probably Emerson would 
do the same. There are few such however among 
American Spiritualists. They still hold to the strict 
Personality of the Deity and other essential features 
of Christianity. They have their meetings — conversa- 
tions etc., about here, often calling themselves Philoso- 
phers. 

Emerson and Alcott mystify, Ripley spiritualizes, 
Stetson jokes, Very poetizes etc., Norton stands out 
against them and receives pamphlets and other squibs 
with perfect composure. I fear he is not altogether 
charitable, however. I have met Rev. T. Parker once ; 
he preaches in a Church in Roxbury, is a Spiritualist, 
a distinguished scholar and clever man. 

Nearly half a century later Bishop Huntington 
wrote: "From 1835 to 1840, a movement was felt 
which was to affect palpably American thought, lit- 
erature and faith. Its influence was exerted primarily 
in Unitarian circles, but reached thinking men in 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 55 

New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. Under the 
name of Transcendentalism it introduced, chiefly 
from German Schools, the intuitional Philosophy, 
not only discrediting experimentalism, and the de- 
ductive process generally, but proposing inevitably a 
new method in the evidences of Christianity, Biblical 
criticism, the testing of creeds, and the spiritual life. 
Naturally enough the incoming wave found easy ad- 
mission in Unitarian ranks, where liberty was already 
a cardinal principle. Immediate fruits were the Norton 
and Ripley debates on Spinoza and Pantheism, the 
'Dial,' Theodore Parker's transfer from the suburbs 
to a Boston lecture hall, the coterie grouped about 
Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and a division of the 
Unitarian preachers and people into a conservative 
and progressive party. A remoter and better conse- 
quence, as the way of Providence is apt to be with 
sincere reforms, was a permanent modification of 
theological habits in various Protestant leaders, a 
widening of the grounds of Christian belief, a fresh- 
ening of dry fountains of discourse, and the dismem- 
berment of a barren cause. Such attending phenomena 
as individual or partisan extravagance, over-statement, 
ill-temper, a provincial cant, an imitative Germanized 
style corrupting good English would be transient. 

" To eager and open-minded young scholars those 
w T ere interesting days. Every week brought some new 
contribution to the local excitement. Emerson preached 
his aphoristic sermon before the graduating class of 
the Divinity School. Was it Pantheism or not ? Henry 
Ware and his coadjutors said it was little or no better. 
Doctors Francis, Stetson, Ripley and others said it 
was a sure prophecy from a divine oracle. Clubs 



56 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






met and sat up late. Translations from German meta- 
physics, poets, and commentators were on parlor centre- 
tables. Bright women recruited the intuitional contin- 
gent. Brook Farm attempted to apply the foreign 
illumination to Yankee industry and the solution of 
labor questions by an improved Fourierism, drawing 
companies from the region round about to brilliant 
symposia, but under a financial necessity presently 
folded its tents and silently stole away. 'Sartor Re- 
sartus' and Carlyle's subsequent writings were then 
and for some time after the popular reading for under- 
graduates and self-educated students all over the land. 
More than that, they were stirring in multitudes a sense 
of the radical difference in all moral and religious and 
social action between appearance and reality, letter 
and spirit, make-believe and self -forgetful earnestness. 
The increase was not all solid gold. When much rub- 
bish is suddenly cast out, there is always risk that some 
new rubbish will be taken in." ■ 

The letter written to the Hadley home, May, 1840, 
called forth some words of warning from his father, to 
which he replied at length. 

Cambridge, May 30. 
To the Rev. Dan Huxtixgtox. 

My dear Father: — This has been the week of 
Anniversaries in the City. Many of them I attended 
with interest. Of course the Conference of Unitarian 
clergymen was the most important in my view. The 
information laid before that body was cheering, the 
spirit manifested was excellent, the discussions able 
and candid. Among other questions that of "New 

1 The Forum, June, 1886. 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 57 

Views" came up and was freely discussed by Revs. 
Ripley, Hedge, Osgood and Stetson, from the new 
party; and Gannett, Pierpont, Hall and Hill from the 
old. 

I thank you sincerely for the excellent cautions in 
your late letter and I took the liberty of reading them 
to a friend or two. As to the merits of the questions 
at issue, I know as yet, but little. I wish to examine 
both sides cautiously, intelligently and fairly. At the 
present point, I can say that I think there is truth in 
all views — that the excesses and marked peculiarities 
of Transcendentalism are all humbug; not however 
because they are new, for I suppose new truths will be 
forever breaking upon men's souls, and that men should 
always stand ready to receive them. 

The weather here has been extremely hot this week, 
the thermometer mounting to 96°. It must be fine 
weather for crops. H. told me the other day that he 
never saw the river valley more beautiful. Would that 
I could look in upon it! 

You inquire kindly about funds. I am in no want 
at present. Expenses here are small. Perhaps I had 
best take a school in the Fall, though that term will be 
a very interesting one here on many accounts and im- 
portant too. 

Please express yourself more fully respecting w T hat 
you think best for me. I am your boy still, though I 
was twenty-one day before yesterday. 

With the truest love and the most affectionate re- 
membrance of all, your dutiful son, Frederic. 

The privilege of hearing eminent preachers was one 
which the young student especially valued. Among 



58 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

these whom he enjoyed, in addition to others already 
mentioned, were Dr. Orville Dewey, Dr. Ezra Stiles 
■ Gannett, Dr. Francis Greenwood, and Dr. George 
Putnam. 

He was at first much impressed by Theodore Parker, 
" so much talked of now, a noble man, eloquent, bold 
and in earnest, and a scholar withal and as spiritual- 
minded as the best of his frightened accusers." This 
in July, 1840. The following year, July, 1841, he writes 
his mother : " Nothing agitates the community in this 
region at present so deeply as Parker's sermon. My 
own unimportant view of the matter, so far as I have 
thought upon it is this. Mr. Parker was unfortunate, 
if not blamable, in selecting, as the occasion of bring- 
ing out opinions so new, an ordination of a minister 
by other ministers of an existing sect whose opinions 
he must have known to differ materially from his own. 
He has embarrassed the Unitarian body gratuitously 
and without right or authority to do so." He was, how- 
ever, at that time, impressed with Theodore Parkers 
fervor and eloquence and ready to give him credit 
for fearlessness and sincerity. 

To his brother he sends an account of experience in 
another line of doctrinal utterance. 

Dear Ned: — I might have been seen, a few even- 
ings since in one of the galleries of Park St. church. 
Persons were one by one quietly taking their places 
in the different parts of the house. The few lamps that 
were lighted burned somewhat dimly and waveringlv. 
I had just concluded an animated whisper conversa- 
tion with a young German Mystic, dismissed now from 
respect to gathering assembly, — Then the deep double 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 59 

bass of the organ, with a full choir pealed forth the 
following, imitating the idea of the third and fourth 
lines, till the building shook to its foundations: 

11 See the storm of vengeance gathering 

O'er the path you dare to tread ! 
Hear the awful thunders rolling, 

Loud and louder o'er your head ! 
Turn O sinner ! " 

And now rose the elegant form of the celebrated 
Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. Kirk. Of him it is 
enough to say he is an eloquent man, a man of superior 
talent, but a poor theologian. 

In the same epistle he concludes: "The Fourth 
with its foolery, its flags, its parades, its false patriotism 
and its pitiable confusion has gone away; and it has 
been succeeded by the holier hours on which we cele- 
brate a nobler than a nation's birth — even a world's — 
the calm, the peaceful commemoration of the resur- 
rection of the Prince of Peace and of the birth of man's 
hope of immortality. To the spirit of that mighty Mes- 
senger — of the Message he brought, I cannot help con- 
sidering the shoutings and shootings as directly opposed. 
They breathe of war and passions, of the senses and sin, 
of forgetfulness of the spiritual element of our nature. 

" Our term is nearly finished. I think I may say, I 
never accomplished a greater amount of work in the 
same time. On casting up the pages I have read and 
studied since the first of March, I find they amount to 
about eleven thousand, besides writing, debating and 
other things. A vacation is quite in place and I am de- 
lighted with your proposition to move among the hay- 
makers. On Saturday I intend to go to Northampton. 



60 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Cannot we meet the week after ? Keep cool. The Lord 
bless you. Yours changelessly, one of the friends whose 
pride you are." 

The course which the student of divinity pursued at 
Cambridge was, as he himself afterwards recalled it, 
one " of which it may be safely said that at that time a 
favorable opportunity for outlook and quiet study was 
the chief advantage, rather than the curriculum and 
the chairs." During the spring of '42 he writes to his 
parents : " Judging from present appearances we are 
likely to be left in the school, as is apt to be the case 
here, very much to the guidance of our own impulses. 
Is it not well that we are such safe young men ? " 

Dr. Henry Ware had become emeritus. His son, 
Dr. Henry Ware, Jun., an excellent and distinguished 
man, was in failing health, and this was the last class 
which had the benefit of his instruction. In October, 
1840: "Our new professor Dr. Noyes has com- 
menced his duties. He seems to be a thoroughly schol- 
arly man, and will doubtless be much liked." In 
ecclesiastical history the students seemed quite inde- 
pendent. "My plan is to take a single idea, a single 
thought, as for example, the idea of the freedom of the 
will, the idea of a Catholic Church, of the Trinity, of 
the Reformation, of Quakerism, and trace it first to 
its original starting-place as nearly as possible and then 
follow out the history of that idea, in all its develop- 
ment and modifications and applications through all 
the periods of Church History. I think it is most phil- 
osophical to follow such a course, and the knowledge 
thus gained is more available." 

Although it was out of the regular system for students 
to preach while at the Divinity School, permission 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION CI 

was granted to do so in certain cases and Mr. Hunt- 
ington seems to have given his first sermon at the 
House of Correction in East Cambridge, March 22nd, 
1841. 

During the following summer he ministered to a 
little flock of " Liberal Christians " who gathered in a 
lonely schoolhouse on the hills above the Connecticut 
Valley. The building still stands in the town of 
Leverett, as humble and remote as it was sixty years 
ago. 

Several years after, when the young minister of the 
South Congregational church in Boston was in the 
height of his activity, his father writes of this worthy 
little band to whom he himself had been ministering : 
"They have given very good attendance. A number 
of them have spoken of you in a very friendly manner. 
They seem to take something to themselves for having 
broken a colt, that bids so fair to run a good race. I 
hope their honest pride may be duly appreciated." 

Huntington was at this same time teaching for a 
second autumn term in the neighboring village of 
Warwick, renewing his old associations, riding daily 
one of his father's horses and laying aside means to 
complete his theological course. He delivered some 
educational and lyceum lectures in the adjoining 
towns, and during the following winter vacation 
preached occasionally in the small Unitarian parishes 
on the river, where his father was in the habit of sup- 
plying the pulpit. 

At times he assisted at King's Chapel in Boston by 
reading the service for Rev. Dr. Greenwood. This was 
his earliest acquaintance with a liturgical form of 
worship. 



m FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Cambridge, April 8, 1842. 

Dear Edward : — All your criticisms upon per- 
formance in the pulpit and upon the clerical office are 
full of interest to me. You cannot well imagine the 
eagerness with which I look about for different styles 
and the success, the excellencies, the blemishes in each. 
Putnam of Roxbury is our greatest preacher now in 
the country. He is simple, direct, nervous, chaste, 
eloquent. James F. Clarke is one of the best and most 
original thinkers. 

Our class are preaching Sunday evenings in the 
village church here. My connection with Mr. Young's 
Sunday-school is a source of a great deal of interesting 
and, I trust, profitable labor. If I were employed with 
the children I should feel myself to be taken from my 
more important studies. But my office concerns rather 
the teachers — whom I meet at their houses on the 
evenings of week-days for conversations, religious, 
theological, critical. They are unrestrained, sociable 
and sensible. Some of these ladies (there is only one 
gentleman and he is silent as a post) are very talented 
and very cultivated — belong to the " first circles " — 
(a horrid expression) and often write beautiful essays. 
To be the instructor of such persons, requires a man 
to have his wits about him, at least. 

During the senior year at the Divinity School he 
served as superintendent of the Sunday-school con- 
nected with the society of Rev. Alexander Young, 
at Church Green in Boston. In this position he was 
the successor of Rufus Ellis, one year in advance of 
him at Cambridge. Rev. Mr. Ellis became pastor of the 
household at Elm Valley, during his ministry at the 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 63 

Unitarian church in Northampton. Of his first visit to 
the town, with his friend Huntington, he afterwards 
wrote in strains of delightful retrospect. 

"It was a beautiful day in the earliest autumn, 
when two of us, fellow students at C. climbed up to 
the seat behind the driver on the old 'Putts-Bridge 
Stage,' which made the connection in those days be- 
tween the Western Railroad and Northampton. Long 
ago in my earliest childhood, I had seen Holyoke and 
Tom, but the visions had passed into dreamland, out 
of which they seemed to come naturally enough that 
refulgent summer; and when we drew up at length at 
the ' Mansion House,' after crossing the ferry at Hock- 
anum and driving none too slow T ly through the rich 
unfenced meadows, came back the associations of the 
time w T hen it was filled with summer strangers and the 
parents of Round Hill scholars. . . . 

" How many walks, how many Sundays followed! 
How many houses became homes, and would still, I 
think. Shall I ever have time to carry on these chapters ? 
— to take some one with me to my first Association, 
(pronounced then by the elders in that region without 
the second syllable, — ' Assciation ') to go over in some 
congenial company to see those dear old saints in Had- 
ley; that calm old man, quietly farming and theologiz- 
ing upon his broad rich meadow, not knowing what a 
stir the son who returned on that Saturday for his va- 
cation was destined to make in our Zion; that true 
Christian woman his wife, that courtly and melancholy 
and wise and large-minded gentleman under the ever- 
greens in the brown house opposite." * 

The two households thus affectionately mentioned 

1 Memoir of Rufus Ellis. 



64 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

by one who was their minister for ten years, were those 
of Rev. Dan Huntington and Major Charles Phelps. 
The latter, Mrs. Huntington's only brother, had 
passed some years of his life in Boston, where he mar- 
ried first a niece and then a daughter of Chief Justice 
Theophilus Parsons. He was admitted to the bar, 
elected a representative of the General Court from 
Boston, and served as commander of the celebrated 
company of cavalry, the Hussars, his immediate pre- 
decessor being Josiah Quincy. In 1816 he removed his 
family to Hadley, where he built a commodious house, 
"Pine Grove." In the town and county he distin- 
guished himself as an influential public officer, member 
at different times of both houses in the legislature, 
a valued counsellor and an upright and honorable 
gentleman. It was by him that the " Oliver Smith 
Will" was drawn, leaving a large fortune to be in- 
vested for charitable purposes, which are widely 
known as "The Smith Charities." The suit instituted 
by the heirs to break the will became famous through 
the celebrated lawyers engaged by the opposing parties. 

Daniel Webster, with his majestic presence and his 
overpowering weight of argument, won the case, but 
the brilliant eloquence of his opponent, Rufus Choate, 
and his glowing description of the scenery 7 of the 
Connecticut Valley, was never forgotten by those who 
crowded the Northampton courthouse that sum- 
mer's day of 1847. It was an occasion which Mr. 
Huntington, an interested listener, often afterwards 
described with inimitable effect. 

Major Phelps spent the later years of his life at his 
Hadley home in complete retirement. Through their 
connections in Boston, and educational advantages, 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION 65 

as well as owing to their tastes and temperament, his 
children grew up to be a family of unusual culture and 
proved congenial neighbors to the cousins at Elm 
Valley. Two sons, Francis, a successful teacher of 
boys, and Arthur, who was for some time connected 
with the customhouse, became leading members of 
the New Church (Swedenborgian) in Boston. The 
third daughter, Caroline, married Stephen Greenleaf 
Bulfinch, a Unitarian clergyman, son of the eminent 
architect and himself a scholar and poet. 

It was not without some struggles and inward ques- 
tioning that Huntington remained to complete his 
course in Cambridge. The Divinity School was in a 
transition state, his resources were restricted, and only 
through extra work and close economy could he avoid 
becoming an expense to his father. At the same time 
there were attractive opportunities already open to one 
who was gifted in speech and eager to enter active 
life in the world. But sober judgment won the day, 
setting the true value upon thorough and painstaking 
preparation for service. In after years his sympathies 
were especially stirred for young men struggling to 
secure an education through their own exertions. 

The annual visitation of the Divinity School took 
place- July, 1842, on which occasion he received the 
certificate of a theological education and read a dis- 
sertation entitled, "The Comparative Prospects of 
Romanism and Protestantism." At the request of Rev. . 
Dr. Gannett, then editor of the " Monthly Miscellany 
of Religion and Letters," the paper was afterwards 
printed in that magazine. 

His character had matured in these three years of 
study. He had entered as a country youth, little ac- 






66 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



quainted with the great world of letters and of men. 
From books and study he had gained much, to men 
of learning he had listened attentively and profited 
by their teaching. But his convictions were acquired 
through independence of thought, and he carried away 
from his theological course the same open spirit with 
which he had entered it. If one word could sum up 
the quality of his nature, it would be reality. He was 
eager in his search for truth and single-minded in his 
purpose to interpret honestly the message revealed to 
him. 

An evidence of this direction of his intellectual 
aspiration is found in the subject he selected for the 
"Master's Oration" which he delivered at Amherst 
College: "A Sincere Belief the Source of a True Life." 
It was at this Commencement, July 28, 1842, that he 
received his degree of A.M., a few weeks after his final 
departure from Cambridge. 



CHAPTER III 



THE FIRST CALL 



" There are two things that they need to possess who go on pilgrim- 
age : courage and an unspotted life." 

It has been made evident that there was no hesitation 
in Mr. Huntington's mind, after his choice was first 
determined, as to his calling to enter the sacred min- 
istry. His inclinations were equally distinct toward 
parish work. The seven years of study, happy as they 
were, prepared him to enter all the more eagerly upon 
the active life of a pastor. From the beginning he was 
earnest to reach the souls of poor as well as rich, to 
come near the toiling masses ; and his father's proposal 
to him to take charge of a little flock in one of the 
pleasant villages of the Connecticut Valley, did not 
accord with this ideal. 

It was not in his character to look out for a set- 
tlement, or to concern himself as to the best open- 
ing for the future. But there were members of 
the Unitarian denomination in Boston already in- 
terested to retain in that vicinity a promising can- 
didate. The first entry in the record of Sunday minis- 
tration, kept afterward without break for sixty-two 
years, is: — 

"After leaving the Divinity School, July 17, 1842. 
Jamaica Plain a. m. and p. m." 






FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



This might have led to a permanent engagement, 
in accordance with the plans of friends, if he had 
not already agreed to furnish a temporary supply for 
some weeks at the South Congregational society. 
This parish, situated on Washington Street at the 
South End, was reduced in numbers and prosperity, 
but it offered an opportunity for future growth. It 
was placed among comfortable homes, and yet near 
the crowded districts of the poorer tenements. The 
region towards Roxbury was a pleasant one, but it did 
not possess the oldtime attraction of the North End, 
or the social prestige of Beacon Hill. Although the 
edifice was not situated in a public centre, within 
near reach of city crowds, it was on a main thorough- 
fare, was sufficiently spacious, and well adapted to 
parish work. To this field an invitation was extended 
on August 7, 1842, before Mr. Huntington had com- 
pleted the term of his temporary charge. It was a 
call to usefulness, and he accepted without long delay, 
entering upon his duties a few weeks later. 

United States Hotel, 

July 19, 1842. 

To Edward Phelps Huntington. 

Dearly beloved Brother: — Last Sunday I preached 
for the first time as a real preacher, at Jamaica Plain. 
Such a world of artistic and natural beauty I am sure 
I never was in before. They invited me from one coun- 
try seat to another, and from one garden of fruits and 
flowers to another, till I was almost bewildered, as if 
in fairyland. The famous Community too, near there, 
was looked at. Dwight hoes corn Sundays. Some sail, 
some walk, some hear Parker preach. The general 



THE FIRST CALL 09 

feeling with which I came away was one of sadness and 
commiseration. 

Nearly forty years later Bishop Huntington wrote 
of the Brook Farm experiment: "This was a sanguine 
attempt of Mr. Ripley, and a few of his friends, to 
embody in a modified form, on a large tract of land, 
some of the better suggestions of the French Com- 
munists, to give everybody something to do in some 
bucolic fashion, to afford a convenient rally ing-place 
for the symposia of the coming reformers of religion, 
literature, society, and so to offer a model of respectable, 
cultured Christian Fourierism, with Fourier and much 
of his nonsense left out. Fine times they had there 
beyond question, with much that was pure and sincere 
and lofty in aspiration and conversation, and much 
that was sentimental, crude and ridiculous. Theodore 
Parker used to come often across the pastures to talk 
with such good company, the farm lying within the 
precincts of his parish. Of an evening the group would 
include very much the same persons, not a few of them 
already or afterwards eminent, that had been accus- 
tomed to gather in the parlors of Mrs. Farrar in Cam- 
bridge, Mrs. Parkman in Boston, or at Mr. Emer- 
son's own house in Concord, or that contributed prose 
or verse, or ' Orphic sayings ' which were neither, to the 
pages of 'the Dial.' Central in the circle, and always 
oracular in speech, each on a separate tripod, were 
Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Mr. Emerson. 

"Hawthorne occasionally looked in, in his silent 
observant way, but did not commit himself. Of the 
young listeners and enthusiastic seekers were Wheeler 
and Bartlett, Jones Very, J. S. Dwight the musician 



70 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

and the lady he married, George W. Curtis and a few 
foreigners. So the experiment went on, hastening to 
dissolution and moribund from the start. If there were 
affinities, so were there antipathies and repulsions. 
Queer people, impracticable people, disagreeable peo- 
ple, in short bores and dunces, always attach themselves 
to novel combinations of that sporadic sort. Mr. Ripley 
was no quartermaster, organizer or financier. The 
turnips and potatoes languished while the builders 
of the Future 'cultivated literature on a little oatmeal.' 
The weeds grew rank while the unanxious husband- 
men discussed the Vedas, recited Schiller, laid down 
the principles of every one of the fine arts, or pondered 
the problems of the universe. Before very long that 
pleasant place of cattle and corn and poultry knew 
them no more. The leader of the enterprise went to 
the Tribune office, Mr. Curtis in due time to his 
editorial chair, the rest hither and thither to seek their 
bread. Another was added to the long list of com- 
munistic failures, God having clearly ordained that 
his sons and daughters shall dwell in families, and that 
the laws of life and duty, labor and thrift, responsi- 
bility and increase, shall not be abrogated by the 
dreams of dreamers, however amiable or honest or 
gifted they may be." 

It has been seen that neither literary nor social in- 
clination led Mr. Huntington among the followers of 
Transcendentalism. He threw himself from the first 
heart and soul into the work of building up his church, 
and beyond his parish visits his leisure was spent in 
an acquaintance which ripened into something deeper 
than friendship. The Bible class which he had con- 
ducted during the winter of 1842 in Rev. Mr. Young's 



THE FIRST CALL 71 

society proved to be of supreme personal importance 
since it was here that he first met his future wife, 
one of the teachers in the Sunday-school and an ear- 
nest member of the congregation. The engagement 
which took place in September could not fail to arouse 
a good deal of interest, as it followed so closely the 
young minister's introduction to his field of labor. 

Hannah Dane Sargent was only nineteen years old, 
and one of a large family of brothers and sisters. In 
communicating his happiness to his brother Edward, 
Mr. Huntington writes : " Her father, Epes Sargent, is 
a merchant in the foreign trade. Her brothers you 
must know something of, Epes is a literary man by 
profession — former editor of the New World, — 
author of Velasco, and many other things. John O. 
has been the editor of the Courier and Inquirer and 
of the Boston Atlas — is now a lawyer in New York. 
The family is large, refined, affectionate and a little 
proud. Gen. Lincoln of the Revolution was her great- 
grandfather." 

The letter announcing to his parents his prospects 
of marriage was entrusted to his brother Charles, at 
that time a member of the General Court, to take back 
when he returned to his home in Northampton. These 
were still the days when it was an object to send mis- 
sives by private hand. Delays and disappointments 
naturally resulted from the system of entrusting cor- 
respondence to the chance transportation of friends and 
neighbors. One often finds in reading the old epistles 
that some recognition or word of sympathy eagerly 
looked for by the absent one was hindered by a slight 
circumstance or a change of plan of the travelers 
going back and forth. For some years Rev. Dan Hunt- 



72 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

ington held the office of postmaster in the village of 
North Hadley, employing the assistance of his sons, 
for a nominal salary which included the privilege of 
sending mail matter exempt from postage, an item of 
importance to so large a family. 

The parents from Hadley had visited Boston during 
" Anniversary Week " of the previous spring, enjoying 
as usual the gatherings for philanthropy and religious 
objects, but they made the journey again in October, to 
meet their son's promised bride and to attend his 
installation. 

The ordination services of Mr. Frederic D. Hunt- 
ington, as pastor of the South Congregational Church 
and Society, took place on the evening of the 19th of 
October, 1842. The introductory prayer was by the 
Rev. Chandler Robbins; selections from Scripture 
were read by Rev. James F. Clarke; the sermon was 
delivered by the Rev. George Putnam; prayer of 
ordination offered by Rev. N. L. Frothingham; the 
charge by the Rev. Dan Huntington, the venerable 
father of the candidate; the right hand of fellowship 
was extended by Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, an intimate 
friend and classmate at Cambridge : the address to the 
society made by Rev. George E. Ellis, and the conclud- 
ing prayer offered by Rev. H. W. Bellows. 

The young pastor's active sympathies and strong 
sense of social responsibility rendered the calls of a 
city parish inspiring, and his spiritual nature found 
deep satisfaction in the opportunity for kindling souls 
to the higher life. 

He wrote to his brother: "The ordination exercises, 
as you will learn by the Transcript and the Times, 
were interesting and eloquent to a most unusual degree. 



THE FIRST CALL 73 

Father's charge seems to have been quite the lion of the 
occasion. Boston people think him a splendid gentle- 
man of the old School. The hymns were compiled by 
me, principally from Bryant, Kirk White, Norton, 
Frothingham and Pierpont. 

" No longer am I, as heretofore, my own man. God 
help me to be a servant of my people and of his Truth. 
My introductory sermons are on 'The influence of 
worship on duty ' and ' The mission and office of the 
Christian minister, in the present age.' ' 

October, 1842. 

Dear and kind Mother : — Your letter, full of 
comfort and pleasing and strengthening and enliven- 
ing words, must receive but a short reply. I have never 
known before what real duties are. All the day I have 
been attending to the printing press (preparing the 
Ordination exercises for the public) and visiting the 
sick and afflicted. I take these first in my parish calls, 
because I think they have the first claim. A sermon is 
yet to be written before Sunday, and a child on that 
day is to be baptized in the church. 

Wednesday, the girl in whom "new 7 wisdom every 
hour I see " and who certainly has a depth of spiritual 
beauty and gentle feeling and refined thought that I 
did not half understand when I first gave myself to her 
— rode with me to Hingham. The occasion at Co- 
hasset was w T ell. Thursday we came back. Her friends 
the Lincolns, 1 have just such a home as our ow T n, — 

1 The mother of Hannah Dane Sargent was Mary Otis Lincoln, 
a grand-daughter of General Benjamin Lincoln whose ancient man- 
sion in Hingham is above referred to. It was then, and is still the 
property of one branch of the family. 



74 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the same air of comfort and ease and old-fashioned 
enjoyment and furniture. 

U. S. Hotel, 
Boston, Jan. 18, '43. 

My Dear Mother : — I am not quite so much hur- 
ried, — I hope I never shall be as to cut me off from 
communing with my friends. Among all my duties and 
engagements 1 I imagine I shall always keep one va- 
cant place sacred at least for my mother and father, and 
I should be rather surprised if it should not be kept 
large enough to include my sisters and brothers. 

I send the "Examiner" containing an excellent 
article by Mr. Henry 7 Ware, on Peace. It belongs to 
Edward and is sent to you because I know you would 
like to read it. 

In the parish we seem to labor not altogether in 
vain; if we grew in grace as rapidly as in numbers, we 
should soon come to the perfect measure. Last Sab- 
bath evening my Missionary sermon was followed up 
by a meeting, and a Committee of ten chosen to visit 
the whole congregation and solicit subscriptions. We 
shall have a contribution besides from those who don't 
like to subscribe. The whole day — Communion 
Sunday — was peculiarly happy and prospered. We 
have social Teachers' meetings once a month and 
meetings for religious instruction and conversation, of 
all who will attend, once a fortnight. These are at- 
tended with great interest at private houses. Last 
Monday, a stormy evening, the house was full to over- 

1 During the winter of the year 1843 Mr. Huntington was chap- 
lain of the Legislature, in connection with Rev. Edward N. Kirk, it 
being the policy at that time to select one from the Unitarian and 
one from the Orthodox denominations. 



THE FIRST CALL 75 

flowing. The exercise consists principally of a familiar 
lecture — extemporaneous — from myself — on the N. 
T. We have commenced the Gospel of John. Some 
one told me that the poorer people felt ashamed to 
come. Last Sabbath therefore, in as delicate a way as I 
could, I gave them a particular invitation, and told the 
rest of the Society somewhat bluntly, that if any of 
them came to exhibit fashion or taste or any external 
accomplishment they would better dress in the plainest 
garb they could find or stay away altogether. 

The correspondence between the two brothers had 
been a close one since Frederic's college days, in spite 
of the fact that Edward was the senior by twelve years. 
He had not taken a college course, but had engaged in 
business and was most happily married in the year 
1841, and settled near Springfield. His tastes were 
literary, and he entered with deep sympathy into the 
details of professional work. To the great sorrow of 
his family he was taken away, in a rapid decline, less 
than six months after the following letter was written. 
The occasion was a call to New York, from the Church 
of the Messiah, inviting the Rev. Frederic Huntington 
to become an associate to the Rev. Dr. Dewey, who 
was out of health. 

Cabotville, March 1, 1843. 

Dear Frederic : — Mr. Mills a few evenings since 
made a remark illustrative of the confidence in men of 
the power of money for any end, however base, w^hich 
was truly shocking. Speaking of his parish, and the 
propriety of going to another in Boston to supply the 
vacancy he said he had no question. The parish that 



76 FREDERIC DAN HTXTIXGTOX 

could give the most — offer the greatest inducements — 
was entitled to the man. This idea wants to be prac- 
tically contradicted. Men should be disabused of this 
pernicious doctrine; and it would be worth one life 
to show men that other things are paramount. Are 
such things esteemed folly ? So is true wisdom even. 
It is not tempted by a view of this world and their 
glory. The proposal has been made public as if tri- 
umphantly, a bauble no one could refuse. The eyes of 
the world are on the decision and the world says " he' 11 
go." But this is nothing compared to the test. 

Your opportunities for study and usefulness which 
are indeed things of highest regard are quite equal. 
Go there and in five years you will either break down 
or burn out. You know my doctrine has always been 
that it is better that a man make his place shine than 
that a place make the man shine. Act calmly, use 
reason, take counsel of conscience and God's word. 
Act so as best to promote the interests of the Gospel 
you preach, not only in probable results but immediate. 
God guide you: very affectionately, 

Edw. P. Huxtixgtox. 

The inducements and arguments to accept the in- 
vitation to New York could not be lightly set aside. 
Miss Sargent's two brothers, Epes and John O., were 
living in New York. They realized the opportunity 
in that city for a youn^ man whose talents had built 
up a city parish to such unexpected numbers and 
financial prosperity in a few month-. The salary of- 
fered was comparatively large and the position a con- 
spicuous one in the Unitarian denomination. Rev. 
Dr. Bellows, in common with influential New York 



THE FIRST CALL 77 

laymen, made a plea as much for the cause of liberal 
Christianity as for the parish itself. It was an opening 
which appealed to ambition and offered many attrac- 
tions. But the claims in Boston were such that Mr. 
Huntington could not long hesitate. He decided that 
his duty lay in the field which he had entered so short 
a time before, and with a people who had generously 
responded to his plans. 

He writes, March 4, 1843, to John O. Sargent: — 

"Any man could have gone with an easier con- 
science than I. As it is, all is well. . . . Here my re- 
lations are perhaps more agreeable than before. Our 
people are full of enterprise and hope and growth." 

The expressions of confidence and affection for their 
preacher were indeed such as to encourage him to 
remain. Still preserved are letters written at that time 
by three men, Jonathan Ellis, John Nazro, and David 
Reed, who in urging him to stay by them gave a pledge 
of hearty support which never failed. Of his people, 
their pastor could say in farewell, when the final 
parting came, that they were " more than friends, — 
the fellow-worshippers of thirteen unclouded, blessed 
years; the companions of how many a secret experi- 
ence, how many a shaded room, where life and death 
were struggling for reconciliation, how many a solemn 
communion, where love and trust were gently striving 
to cast out doubt and fear." 

It has been said that there were few instances where 
the mutual affection of minister and people was so 
great. If the pulpit was conspicuous for its devotional 
and uplifting character the hearers were no less earnest 
in the application of the sermon to their daily lives. 
The Rev. Edward E. Hale, writing of Mr. Huntington, 






78 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



his immediate predecessor, called it w an intense and 
eager preaching which is not satisfied until the whole 
man is quickened and his life fired. At the same time 
he is an organizer as he has always been. I have been 
told that in college he was called, in joke, the s Major 
General/ and I can well believe it. He did not mean 
to do all the work of a church, active and eager though 
he were. He meant to have its members work, and 
where he led the way they followed loyally. 

"Never was a ministry more successful. The 
church was full; the charities were admirably ad- 
ministered; the Sunday-school was in perfect order. 
More than this, oh so much more than this, hearts had 
found living food here that had hungered and thirsted 
elsewhere. Here were those who had heard no peace 
elsewhere and had found it here. Here were voices 
pleading with God, and finding an answer, who had 
not known how to plead before. Here was sin repent- 
ant and forgiven. Here were exiles who had been lost 
and were found. Here were those who were all alone 
in a strange city and in this church, in its fellow- 
ship and its minister had found companionship and 
a new life." 

The impression Mr. Huntington's personality made 
upon a casual listener is given in the following sketch, 
published in the local press of the day. 

" The prevailing quality of his character is exhibited 
in the deep and heartfelt seriousness which pervades 
his whole manner, in the solemn and impressive tones 
of his voice, and in the great scope and dignity of the 
thoughts he utters. The style of his composition is 
elegant, refined, and polished — but his innate power of 
mind, strength of character and range of thought. 



THE FIRST CALL 79 

overwhelms and obscures, in a measure, even those 
high graces of art. He seemed to us like a wise and 
devout statesman, deeply versed in the study of that 
greatest of all studies — the riddle of the universe — 
human nature. He is a man fitted by the constitution 
of his mind to rule among men — to govern, direct, and 
harmonize a society, or a community. He would 
make an excellent governor of a colony. He would en- 
joy the respect, esteem, and confidence of his people; 
and all his acts would be distinguished for their sense, 
judgment, dignity and humanity." 

One recognizes in this early portrait those com- 
manding qualities which for thirty-five years distin- 
guished the bishop of the Diocese of Central New 
York. But far beyond any executive ability or literary 
distinction was the spiritual influence of the preacher. 
It is the blessed privilege of a consecrated ministry 
like his to impress upon the hearts of his hearers the 
reality of a personal Saviour. No negations, omissions, 
or deviations in theology obscured the presentation 
of the Living Redeemer as a source of holiness and 
strength to those who seek Him. It was for this water 
of life to thirsty souls that many orthodox believers, 
from other Christian bodies, found their way on Sun- 
day afternoons to the corner of Castle Street, and 
received religious inspiration and renewal. 

On September 4, 1843, Frederic Dan Huntington 
and Hannah Dane Sargent were married at the resi- 
dence of the bride's father in Hartford Place. The 
ceremony was performed by the Rev. Alexander 
Young, the family pastor. The couple took a wedding 
journey, which for those days was quite extensive, 
reaching Niagara Falls, visiting friends in the tow^ns 



80 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

and cities of New York State, and ending at Elm 
Valley in Hadley. 

Mr. Huntington preached in Albany and Rochester 
to Unitarian congregations. The following character- 
istic letter from Rev. Dan Huntington outlines the 
trip, although it was not precisely carried out as he 
advises. 

Elm Valley, Sept., 1843. 

Dear Frederic : — As you are about to journey 
through a new and interesting part of the country, I 
would make the most of it as a tourist. And to that 
end, I would abandon as much as possible all rail- 
roads, canals and steamboats. As it relates to any 
pleasure as a tourist, I should about as soon take a ride 
through the centre of the earth, if it were properly 
perforated, as to be transported in cars or steamboats, 
or any other boats. By all means get a peep at all the 
villages, and hamlets, and mountains and plains, and 
lakes and waterfalls, of our beautiful country as far 
as possible. Let none escape, where you go. To this 
end travel on the top of stages, in buggies and in cabs 
and if there is no other way, trips on foot occasionally 
will do you no harm. 

In Rochester, make yourself known to Mrs. Backus, 
the widow of Dr. Backus, my old neighbor and Presi- 
dent of Hamilton College. In Trenton, report yourself 
to the Van der Kemps. One of them you know is a 
correspondent of your mother. In Utica, report your- 
self to Judge Bacon, the poet, the Judge, the Philoso- 
pher, my classmate and correspondent, his wife one 
of the lambs of my flock at Litchfield, a particular 
friend of Judge Story. Make it an object to see the 
great number of neat and pleasant villages about 



THE FIRST CALL 81 

Utica. When on the North river call over to Saratoga — 
Ballston — Troy — Waterford, the Minister's wife here 
was Betsey Porter. Stop if you please at Pittsfield one 
night, take a horse and buggy and travel up and down 
the valley of the Housatonic, one of the finest tracts 
of country in the world, embracing Stockbridge, 
Lenox, Sheffield, Great Barrington, Lanesboro, Wil- 
liamstown &c. I have not time to proceed. 

Tell Hannah I now love her as a daughter, one 
among the first nine or ten in the world. Wishing you 
both much joy, 

I am affectionately yours, 

D. Huntington. 

"Your Aunt Lyman with a numerous progeny are 
in Western New York. See them all. Edward can 
tell you who and where they are." 

The death of Edward Phelps Huntington occurred 
only a month after his brother's marriage. The fol- 
lowing letter was written to their sister, in the family 
home. 

Boston, Oct. 30, '43. 

My dear Sister Bethia : — From the letters writ- 
ten last week, I was made aware with what unexpected 
rapidity the disease was acting. Finding no farther 
information Saturday evening I had made up my 
mind that the suffering man was not yet released. 
Charles, however, had written me on Friday of his 
death, though from some delay his communication did 
not reach me till this (Monday) noon. You are this 
very afternoon laying away the dust, made precious 
to us by the spirit that animated it, out of all human 
sight. May God's blessed and comforting spirit be 



82 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

with you all. May he send down upon the house and 
the hearts that are made dark with mourning, the light 
of his own fatherly smile and favor. May he give you 
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit 
of heaviness. 

Knowing how much our brother must have longed 
for his freedom, knowing what a burden to him that 
aching body must be, knowing how infinite to him 
must be the gain of separation, I was ready, willing, 
almost eager to hear of the consummation. Thanks 
be to the Father of all mercies that he does not chain 
the soul to its cumbering tenement forever. Thanks 
be given to him that after a little discipline of pain, he 
takes the part that cannot perish, into a world congenial 
to its high attributes, to its glorious nature. I could 
have wished indeed to have been able to see the patient 
look, and hear the kind voice once more. But that 
could not be and I am content. The uncertainties of 
the case and my duties here have prevented my being 
with you. You have better consolations than any 
mortal lips could speak, I am sure. 

It can hardly be supposed that the calmness with 
which affliction is met and submitted to, is a sure test 
of the depth or vitality of our Christian affections and 
principles and hopes. Yet I do believe if we are true to 
our Master and his Revelation we shall not fail to see 
what inestimable compensations there are for those 
who die believing, and for those who are left lonely by 
their departure. " Whoever belie veth in me shall never 
die. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, tho' 
he were dead yet shall he live." How much more intense 
was the anguish of Christ, often — his physical pain 
and his inward suffering both — than ours can be ! 



THE FIRST CALL 83 

And yet how little he seemed to grieve ! How invincible 
was his fortitude! How calm his patience! How un- 
disturbed his tranquillity — because he stood so near 
to God. 

It should be, surely, our full satisfaction that we 
can find, as we contemplate the character and life of 
our brother, how successfully he had struggled to form 
himself after Christ's own image; how many of his 
virtues he had gained; how much of a like heavenly 
temper of self-sacrifice, benevolence and piety pos- 
sessed him continually. He has gone where there is 
no sorrow, nor sighing, nor distress. We will all say it 
is well. We will not complain. We will only strive to 
be better than before. 

Boston, Dec. 23. 

My dear Mother : — Thanks, ten thousand thanks 
for your letter. It was full of home, of both homes, the 
earthly and the heavenly. What beautiful sentences 
those of Edward that Father found! They are worth 
a long search. They seem lij^e a new chapter of the 
Gospel — the gospel of love and self-renunciation, 
and calm trust in God. 

Your letters have a faculty of seating me down in 
the old fireside. How I wish I could in reality sit dow^n 
there now, — - this quiet Saturday evening. What 
would I not give for one of those ancient Saturday 
evenings when we were all together. I am not very 
busy, as I am to preach at the College Chapel to-mor- 
row, on an exchange with Dr. Walker. Day after 
to-morrow is Christmas. I am told Ellis holds a service 
and I hope you will be able to attend. Mr. Putnam is 
to preach at King's Chapel, and that will give me a 
chance to listen. I like the observance of Christmas. 



84 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

You speak of my walks among the poor and Han- 
nah's. You would be interested in some of our cases. 
There is a devoted company of good women in my 
flock, that I can call upon for aid at any moment, and 
all together we trust we are bringing some comfort 
into a good many cellars and hovels. It is enough to 
make one sick to see the wretchedness we go amidst 
sometimes. But the Benevolent Societies are so active 
that few are left without fuel and provisions. I send 
you a circular that I was appointed to draw up a few 
days ago. 

The Ladies' Society of which the pastor speaks 
in such words of confidence and commendation was 
in existence when he took the parish. Under the 
name of "The South Friendly " it held a long record 
for good works. Rev. Mr. Hale calls it "an elastic 
organization ready for the largest or the smallest duty. 
It could clothe regiments for the war, as it has done, 
or it could sell a buttonhole bouquet on May morning 
as it has done. It was equipped for the duties of hos- 
pitality, of worship, of charity, of education. Here 
was a step quite in advance of the average Boston 
congregation of the generation before this church 
was founded." 

Of his methods of parish work the young minister 
writes to his parents : " Our vestry meetings — once 
a fortnight — have begun. We have a devotional 
exercise, sing twice, meditate a little; I deliver a 
familiar lecture on some topic connected with the 
religious life, and after some general conversation 
we separate. We talk of having a public service on 
the last night of the year." 



THE FIRST CALL 85 

But it was not only in his own parish that the effect 
of Mr. Huntington's energy and earnestness in active 
work were felt. "To him as much as to any man 
Boston owes the systematic arrangement of the Provi- 
dent Association for the relief of the poor, set on foot 
by him and his friends in the southern wards, and 
enlarged to take in all the city." 

The plans for regular registration, sectional visit- 
ing, intelligent investigation, cooperation with public 
authorities and with other charitable societies, were 
features much the same as those introduced twenty -five 
years later by the united charity organizations. The 
South End Provident Association was inaugurated in 
1851 with Rev. Mr. Huntington for its president. Its 
objects were " not only to succor existing misery, excite 
the indolent to labor, and restrain the vicious, but 
to make some permanent contribution to the sanitary, 
economical, and moral welfare of the suffering classes 
in our large towns and cities." 

Mr. and Mrs. Huntington began housekeeping at 
No. 20 Harrison Avenue, next door to their lifelong 
friends Rev. James I. T. Coolidge, Minister of Pur- 
chase street church, and his wife, who was Mary 
Rogers, a niece of Dr. William Ellery Channing. 

Boston, Oct. 5, 1843. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

My dear Sister ; — It has taken just about one week 
to get into a settled state — a straightforward path. 
People say we look here now as if we had been house- 
keepers a dozen years. In truth I almost feel so myself. 
I thank Heaven daily for my home. Friends are kind 
and callers are plenty, quite sufficiently so. Hannah is 



86 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

as easy and matronly as possible. Monday evening the 
house was open to the parish and thronged. Everything 
was on a simple and informal scale and I intend to 
repeat the thing on the first Monday evening of each 
month. 

The congregation was generous and appreciative. 
The following spring, May 15, 1844, after a visit to 
the young couple his father writes : " The little hoist to 
your salary was a very good hit. The next time we 
visit you may it be up to $2500. Some of your good 
folks talked with me on the subject, altogether gratui- 
tously on their part, saying that they were growing 
rich by your popularity, and that they had no desire 
to put it into their own pockets. I barely observed that 
it was a good thought." 

On July 3, 1844, the first child was born, an event of 
joy and thankfulness to his parents. He was named 
George Putnam, after his father's valued friend and 
counselor, the pastor of the First Church in Roxbury. 

In 1845 Mr. Huntington purchased a very pleasant 
house in Roxbury, which was his home during the 
remainder of his connection with the South Congre- 
gational society. This residence was on Hawthorn 
Street, part of the old farm laid out two hundred years 
before by Florence Maccarty, a forefather of Mrs. 
Huntington. 

To his Mother. 

The house itself is spacious and commodious, has 
a pleasant garden connected with it, and a grove hard 
by in the rear belonging to a gentleman's private 
grounds. It is sheltered from the winds, and overlooks 




FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON, MT. 27 
From a Crayon Portrait in 1846 by Seth Cheney 



THE FIRST CALL 87 

an agreeable stretch of country. On the top is an 
outlook, or cupola, giving a view of the harbor and a 
part of the city. 

There is space enough, the air comes in fresh and 
pure from the hills, and the garden will give me the 
exercise on the soil which I need, besides affording 
me an opportunity to apply whatever I know about 
the arrangement of trees and shrubbery. As to dis- 
tance, the place is two miles from my church, not far 
after all. Omnibuses run every fifteen minutes, and 
the walk of forty minutes beneficial. If I calculate 
rightly we shall see rather more of our parish than 
less, living in the same place summer and winter, 
making a weekly business of visiting them, having 
frequent meetings in the vestry, and a pretty spot to 
invite th^m to, with only a short walk or ride. 

Highlands, March 26, '46. 

My dear Parents : — If I remember rightly, my 
last message homeward was a rather hasty one by 
some necessity. The last few weeks have been particu- 
larly occupied and I am a little more at leisure now. 
The Sunday-school Book took a good deal of time. 
That has gone to press now and I sincerely hope it 
may be useful. To do something for the moral eleva- 
tion of the young in this exposed, tempted and worldly 
age, would be indeed an achievement to be earnestly 
desired, and if attained, to be greatly thankful for. 

I have just completed an Introduction to an Ameri- 
can edition of "Martyria." 1 The book will be out 

1 William Mountford, author of Martyria, an Englishman and a 
Unitarian Clergyman, has been most widely known through his 
book Euthanasy published in America in 1849. Mr. Huntington 
wrote the editorial note of introduction. Several vears before he had 



88 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

soon and I hope you will like it as much as I do. It 
is full of noble and pure sentiments. 

If you hear that I have turned " Parkerite," for 
rumors take strange freaks nowadays, — ascribe it to 
so imposing a foundation as the fact that Parker has 
several times picked me up as a pedestrian on the 
road, and taken me into town in his buggy, — a 
courtesy which I have acknowledged by calling on 
him at his house. We had a long talk on theological 
matters, and I am, if possible, more strongly convinced 
than ever, that his views are neither Scriptural or 
logical. But I do feel the utmost friendliness towards 
him as a man, and endeavor to cherish a generous 
charity towards his honest errors of opinion, and I 
should not dare to call myself a Christian if I did not. 

The book mentioned was the first he ever prepared 
for publication, a Text Book on the Book of Acts. 
From his college days to the end of his life, Mr. Hunt- 
ington was engaged almost continually in newspaper 
and periodical work, and it was a means of influence 
for which he was especially fitted. Gifted with fine 
literary discrimination and command of language; 
naturally ardent for a cause, without any leaning 
towards partisanship; always conversant with the 
currents of thought of his day and generation; un- 
sparing in rebuke and yet by disposition not a dis- 
putant or inclined to controversy; he appreciated the 
dignity and the responsibility of the editorial chair 

obtained passage for Mr. Mountford to this country and entertained 
him many months at his own home. Mr. Mountford married in 
Boston, and became minister of a church in Gloucester, Massa- 
chusetts. 



THE FIRST CALL 89 

without overstepping its privileges. His earliest connec- 
tion of this nature, after entering the ministry, was with 
the " Monthly Religious Magazine.'* In November, 
1844, he writes his mother: "It is next year probably 
to be my ' Monthly.' Mr. Gannett is busy with the 
6 Examiner ' and sees that I can conduct it just as well 
alone. It will be no more trouble to me, or but little; 
the work will be pleasanter for being all to myself and 
the pay much more considerable. I am securing an 
excellent list of contributors, so that there will be 
little left for me to do in the w r ay of writing for it." 

In a very urgent appeal he asks his mother to be 
one of the writers, giving the result of her " agreeable, 
profitable and holy contemplations." Her reply in the 
negative is characteristic. 

"Whether with greater opportunities for mental 
cultivation in youth, I might have been able to write 
a decent paragraph, or whether there is a natural 
deficiency, a want of intellectual capability, are ques- 
tions which it would be difficult for me to answer. I 
must content myself with the hope, that if I here, 
according to my poor ability, desire and endeavor to do 
good in a very small way, if only by waiting and weep- 
ing between the porch and the altar, I may in a future 
life be furnished with powers which will enable me 
to render a higher service to Him who claims our 
best and our all." Mr. Huntington was an editor of 
the "Christian Register" from 1847 to 1851, and 
of the "Monthly Religious Magazine " from 1845 to 
1859. 

Incessant literary labor in his study did not interfere 
with active days in the parish. The month of his 
ordination he wrote home: "Parish calls begin to 






90 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



look thick and frequent. I feel such a need as I never 
felt before of strength and wisdom, not from men or 
books." And in November, 1848 : " I have just com- 
pleted a circuit of some three hundred calls, accom- 
plished this fall, which has kept me, with other duties, 
very busy. Hannah is nobly engaged in the same 
service more or less every week." "You will be glad 
to hear that a very comfortable sleigh has just been 
given me, by the same gentleman who last year en- 
dowed us with a pair of wolf-skins. By the latter 
happy device, we are conveniently exempted from the 
charge of going abroad as wolves in sheep's clothing." 

Long drives were taken not only on clerical ex- 
changes but to deliver lyceum lectures, then at the 
height of popularity. Many a time the lecturer, re- 
turning from some distant point late at night, would 
find the young wife sitting up for him in the stillness of 
the country neighborhood, with the big Newfound- 
land dog Neptune keeping faithful guard. One 
record of a single season mentions forty places in 
Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, where 
engagements were kept. 

The subjects treated were Alfred the Great, a Com- 
plete Manhood; Common Sense and Intellectual 
Energy; Intellectual Sincerity; Hebrew Heroism; 
Epicureanism; Independence of Character; St. Chry- 
sostom; Work and Study. 

February 6, '50. 

To his Sister. 

It is excessively cold; and last night I rode off a 
dozen miles to lecture and back again; so that to-day 
I enjoy the fire, a good wood-fire, in my study. I gave 
a lecture that I had delivered only twenty-two times 



THE FIRST CALL 91 

before. Should not you think it would be tedious ? 
A new audience every time helps the interest a little. 

It was by hard work of this kind that the Roxbury 
home was paid for and a beginning made on the ulti- 
mate purchase of the ancestral estate, at Hadley, 
originally the property of his mother, held after her 
death in 1847 by his father as a life tenure and then 
to be divided among the brothers and sisters. 

Highlands, June 14, '46. 
To his Sister. 

My dear Beihia: — It is Sunday morning again and 
a beautiful one. You can imagine what a refreshment 
it is to me, before going into the city for the labors 
and excitements of the day, to have a few morning 
hours here of perfect quiet, in the midst of a fragrant 
air, and a stillness broken by nothing but singing 
birds. It is like baptism in pure water. And its in- 
fluence ought certainly to go with one, like a sacred 
charm, until the evening. 

Several young locusts in my yard are now out, and 
they make the atmosphere sweet in two senses, — by 
their odors, and by reminding me of the locusts on our 
place at home which used to flourish by the street. 
Then pinks are out and syringas have ventured to 
show a few white petals, tho' it is their first year. 
Another fragrant plant is the Missouri currant. A 
flowering almond, a tree rose, two altheas, a smoke 
tree, a tulip tree; some honeysuckles, the English 
scarlet hawthorns, and nearly all my ornamental and 
fruit trees have taken root and are beginning to grow. 
Hannah and her husband and son take a great deal 



92 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

of pleasure which they hope is not irrational in the 
daily nurture and observation of these wonderful 
things of the Almighty. 

In the Spring of 1846 came the great anxiety and 
sorrow of Elizabeth Huntington's illness. She was in 
failing health through the following twelve months. 

Highlands, April 12, '46. 

My dear Mother : — I must take these few mo- 
ments on Sunday morning before Meeting to offer you 
my affectionate salutations and tell you how anxiously 
I sympathize with your infirmities. How my letter 
may find you is uncertain; but my earnest desire is 
that your pain may have been relieved, your weakness 
strengthened, your disease stayed in its course. It is 
my continual prayer that though your body may grow 
feeble, your spirit may wax stronger and stronger in 
faith and courage and hope; that outward suffering 
may be made up by inward peace; that the soul may 
exult and rejoice in lofty communion with God and 
Christ while the earthly tabernacle languishes. 

It is Easter Sunday. I like the practice of observ- 
ing this occasion, as it celebrates the great event in 
the life of the Saviour and the foundation of our im- 
mortal hope, turning our mortal darkness into un- 
speakable glory. My sermon is on the proofs of Christ's 
Resurrection, "The Lord is risen indeed." 

If I go to Hartford to the dedication and installation 
I shall look in upon your sick room a few hours within 
ten days. Peace be with you from God the Father, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Devotedly your son, 

Frederic. 






THE FIRST CALL 93 

Mrs. Huntington passed from earth on April 6, 1847, 
the day of the Annual Public Fast, an anniversary of her 
solemn written dedication of herself in girlhood and 
her admission to communion with the church. 

Her strongest desire to be released from the agony 
of her disorder was uttered after a weary night, in the 
words of the patriarch, w Let me go for the day break- 
eth." Reminded of the loved ones who had gone be- 
fore, she replied, " Oh, yes, I shall look them all up." 

April 19, Mr. Huntington writes to his sister: " The 
remembrance of everything relating to herself is cheer- 
ful, consoling and inspiring. What a rare character 
was hers ! Of all that I have become conversant with 
thus far in my life, I have found none purer, truer, 
more blameless. Ought we not all to rejoice in the light 
of her goodness, and live in the strength of her faith ? " 

A great quickening of the soul, in a certain sense a 
conversion, took place in her youngest child after his 
mother's death. 

Not long subsequent, the journal, kept by her 
from youth to old age, came into his possession. Read- 
ing it with all the tender memories awakened, recalling 
how his mother had openly walked with God through- 
out those years, in consistency of life and devotion to 
works of religion and charity; her private meditations; 
deep sorrow for daily faults, and prayers for pardon; 
her intense longings for Divine grace awakened in 
him questionings as to what was the hidden source of a 
religious consecration like hers. He searched his own 
heart and exclaimed to an intimate friend, "My mo- 
ther had found something which I have never known." 
It was the sense of sin. Deep down in the theology of 
her Puritan forefathers, under a system which con- 



94 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

tained distortions and intolerance from which her soul 
recoiled, Elizabeth had yet gained a realization of the 
Divine presence, a sense of the majesty of God, which 
filled a nature full of sensibility like hers with con- 
trition and repentance, sent her on her knees before 
the Saviour she loved, and wrought in her a passionate 
entreaty for higher spiritual gifts. At this turning- 
point in his experience her son realized that there were 
foundations on which he had not a foothold, and lofty 
heights of faith he had not attained. He reached out for 
a definite creed, a positive belief. Stirring within him 
was an unrest to which he was not prepared to give 
conscious expression. He was hardly yet aware 
of the need of an established order, a visible church. 
But the immediate result showed itself in an address 
before a convention of Unitarian ministers at Ports- 
mouth, New Hampshire, October 8, 1851. The text 
was taken from Phil, iii, 3 : w For we are the circum- 
cision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in 
Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." 
The title is "Spiritual Heirship." 1 

The day before this was delivered Rev. Mr. Hunt- 
ington had written to his father : " I have prepared a 
sermon for this occasion with some care and many 
prayers for light. If it is true, it ought to be preached; 
if it is not, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it 
will not be believed because I have preached it." Few 
who made up the hearers of the discourse, more than a 
half century ago, are left to recall it. One, however, 
Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, states that the ministerial 
brethren there assembled recognized clearly that it 
betokened a change working in the mind of the writer. 

1 Sermons jor the People. 



THE FIRST CALL 95 

Already he had begun to feel himself less in sympathy 
with the denomination which had been his home. 
This appears in a letter to his father dated May, 1851. 

The Highlands. 
You can hardly realize how beautiful our own 
place here has become. I know of no spot except 
Hadley that I prefer to it. Every moment's breath is a 
delicious luxury. The anniversaries are going on; 
but I like the trees, the stillness, and the flowers so 
much more than white cravats and black coats and 
crowded meetings, that I give Boston as wide a berth 
as possible, and have declined all invitations to speak. 

Still more significant of changing views was a visit 
paid to the Rev. S. L. S. Dutton, an Orthodox Con- 
gregational minister, and pastor of the old North 
Church in New Haven, Connecticut, for whom he 
preached in March, 1852. In the following May Mr. 
Dutton preached for him, with full approval of his 
congregation. This, however, was then regarded as 
an act of catholicity rather than as betokening any 
theological sympathy between the two clergymen 
and their flocks. 

He himself describes to his father his visit to Mr. 
Dutton: "He moved up into the pulpit with me, and 
looked around at the audience, as if he thought he 
had done a clever thing, for which the church universal 
ought to thank him. Nothing went awry. The trini- 
tarian doxology, which it is the practice of his choir 
to sing at the close of the service, was omitted, perhaps 
by the delicacy of the chorister, or of Mr. D. himself. 

" Monday morning I left and returned home. Alto- 



96 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

gether my visit was a delightful one. Whether any bene- 
fit is to come of it, on a wider scale than my personal 
gratification, I cannot tell. Results are with God." 

On June 26, 1853, Rev. Mr. Huntington preached 
for the Rev. Samuel J. May, in Syracuse, so long to 
be the seat of his episcopal labors in future years. 
He was at this time on his way to Meadville to deliver 
a sermon before the graduating class of the Theologi- 
cal School. The subject of the discourse, afterward 
published in his first volume, was "The Word of Life; 
a Living Ministry and a Living Church." w God was 
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." 

In the Roxbury home a second child, a daughter, 
was born in June, 1848, and in October, 1852, an 
infant son came into the world to live scarcely two 
weeks. 

Highlands, October 28, '52. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

Dear Sister: — It is well our little Charlie stayed 
with us just long enough to become one of us, — to be 
numbered in our household, — to take a distinct in- 
dividual place, — to become a possession to memory 
and affection forever. He is our third child, — only 
not visible to these eyes of flesh, but making Heaven 
far more a reality than it ever was before. 

Death in our house! How much more terrible that 
thought would have been two weeks ago, than it is 
now! So gracious is God. The house has more the 
feeling as if God had set his seal upon it than it had 
before. We seem, somehow, spiritually safer in it. A 
more complete experience of life has been had within 
it. I think I was never conscious of God's hand being 



THE FIRST CALL 97 

laid so directly on my heart, as during this anxiety and 
mourning. There is something encouraging in it. u For 
our profit " it is and certainly it would be shameful for 
us to be so corrected without profit. Pray for us that 
it may not be so. If one may speak so, it appears as 
if God is more in earnest with us, showing us by this 
sharper discipline that he really means to make some- 
thing of these poor, halting, sinning natures, — if we 
will only let him, after all. Throughout the sickness, 
and since, we were assured that God was directing us 
exactly as he would, moment by moment; and so we 
could pray for the child's life, and yet be certain that if 
he died, it would be because that would be better for 
us all. 

The children, — how much I dreaded to tell them! 
One morning, the fresh and boundless joy of waking to 
learn they had a little brother; and then a hundred 
bright plans formed; and another morning, twelve days 
after, they awake to hear the little brother is gone. 
After leaving the little body at midnight with the cold 
air blowing in from the open window upon it, — I was 
able to feel — how safe, how sheltered, his spirit is ! 
But I waited painfully the waking of the living ones. 
With much effort I succeeded in telling them cheer- 
fully. They were sad only a few minutes. Again God 
was more merciful than my fears. Their regrets are 
frequent but not gloomy. After we had talked with 
them of the spirit and the body, — of the beautiful 
place at Mt. Hope, — already a spot of happy associa- 
tions, — where we should put the body, — and of the 
more beautiful place where the soul is, — they went 
eagerly and pleasantly in to look at the motionless face, 
and it was plain enough how artificial, how entirely the 



98 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

effect of education, is all the dread and the recoil 
from the presence of death, — for there was nothing of 
it in them. 

You will imagine what a day Sunday was with us; 
solemn to all the land, but trebly so to us, for it was the 
tenth anniversary of my settlement. 

The public event to which the writer refers was the 
death of Daniel Webster. 

Roxbury, Nov. 23, '52. 

My substitute for a personal attendance at your 
Thanksgiving table; and to be read after your 
breakfast. 

My dear Sister Bethia : — You are by this time 
quite convalescent, I hope. May the good comfort 
and grace of God be with you. It is not for me to 
exhort you to patience, who have myself so much need 
to learn it from you. If it is not familiar to your mem- 
ory, get Father to read you Milton's magnificent 
passage " Hail Holy Light." You will feel it now, 
perhaps with a new sense, and at any rate the prayer — 
"So much the rather thou, celestial Light, shine in- 
ward," will be breathed by you and answered. 

This last expression reminds me of a train of thought 
which has lately interested me, and which I have put 
into a sermon, on the text "Ask and it shall be given 
you." The sermon w T as designed to meet some of the 
difficulties that arise in the mind respecting answers 
to prayer; and especially to resist the notion which 
has come somewhat into vogue in our day, that the 
only office of praying is to stimulate ourselves, bring on 
a better mood, and so benefit us according to natural 






THE FIRST CALL 90 

laws. On the contrary, the whole teaching of Scrip- 
tures seems to me to show us that there are verily and 
literally two parties engaged in this high communion, 
God and the praying soul; one actually asking, and 
the other actually giving; as much so, as if a hand 
were visibly stretched out from the skies, placing gifts 
in ours. How these answers are made to consist with 
natural laws, so called, or the fixed order of things, 
must of course be a mystery to us ; because we did not 
make nature, and are finite. But faith readily accepts 
such mysteries, in many other cases as difficult as this, 
and experience confirms the Bible doctrine. My own 
experience certainly does; and I doubt not, yours 
does. To me there has been of late a growing satis- 
faction in this spiritual exercise. I have known re- 
markable answers to particular and personal inter- 
cessions, in my intercourse with my people. Religious 
changes and Christian peace seem to have been 
granted, wonderfully, to such petitions. And then did 
any of us ever have a real trouble that prayer did not 
strikingly and supernaturally lighten ? I can see now 
— what I could not once — how it is rational and 
right to pray for earthly good in particular respects, 
so far as that is connected with our spiritual progress 
and safety; although of course, no prayer is the prayer 
of faith which is not offered with the willingness that 
God should withhold the thing asked for, and answer 
in some other way. In the growth of these sentiments, 
I have often been led back to our blessed mother's 
instructions. Who knows but that growth itself is one 
of the answers to her own prevailing supplications ? 
Prayers of the righteous hers were, indeed. It often 
occurs to me that whatever progress the Spirit has 

LOFC. 



100 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

permitted me to make in a religious experience — 
poor and slow enough I know it is, — has only brought 
me nearer to the very' point where her own convic- 
tions rested. The counsels that I hardly understood, 
or did not receive them, are welcomed now with my 
whole soul. 

Would to God I could tell her so. She might then 
keep a new Thanksgiving, in her world of bliss, — her 
life of joy and glory 7 , But how, again, do we know but 
every thought and motion in us, her own family still, 
is seen of her ? " Every one that hath this hope, puri- 
fieth himself." 

How much my thoughts will be with you and father 
and all the dear kindred, on Thursday! You do not 
know how I long to spend one more Thanksgiving at 
Hadley. Something in that day always makes me feel 
as if I ought not to be anywhere else. Very quiet, you 
will be. But dear affections, holy hopes, sweet memo- 
ries, a glorious faith, the Infinite Father and his Christ, 
will all be with you. Are not these honored guests? 
You will not be alone. 

Highlands, July 23, 1854. 
Dear Father and Sister: — When I returned 
from church this morning I found myself the father 
of a fourth child, a third son. I know of none on earth, 
whom we can more confidently invite to share in our 
gratitude to the Giver of Life and breath and all 
things, and in all our sober rejoicings, than you and 
the dear ones about you. Of course when we remem- 
ber how soon our little Charlie was caught away from 
our arms, after he was placed in them, our joy must 
be chastened and our hopes moderated. But I trust 



THE FIRST CALL 101 

we are not the less truly happy for that. We ought only 
to feel the Father to be nearer, and Heaven more 
actual. To the glory of the one, and a wise prepara- 
tion for the other may this child live, so long as he is 
permitted to stay in this world. 

The third son was baptized James Otis Sargent for 
his mother's brother. 

March 23, '53. 

To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

I am very busy, in connection with Dr. Hedge of 
Providence, compiling a new hymn-book, which we 
mean of course to make rather better than any that 
have gone before it. It will certainly contain many 
hymns you have never seen, from the Catholic and 
Wesleyan collections, from the German, and other 
sources. Piety finds its natural expression in singing ; 
and the religion of any sect may be judged of, I think, 
by the sacred music through which it worships God. 

The book referred to was published with the title 
of "Hymns for the Church of Christ," and contains 
much beautiful sacred verse. It was only a beginning 
of that strong interest which lasted through life, in 
hymnology, church music, and religious poetry. 
Mr. Huntington's nature was one which found peculiar 
sympathy with what he called "the song element in 
personal character." Writing long after, he says: 
"For common-place business and routine tasks the 
mind is contentedly prosaic; but when religious emo- 
tion rises to a higher pitch it is undulated into mea- 
sures of liberty and gladness. 

" Older than sermons, older than lessons, older 



102 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

even than her written creed, is the psalmody of three 
thousand years, the song-power of the Church. From 
the first shout of the sons of God on the morning of 
creation until the predicted strains of the new heavens 
and the new earth, this is a characteristic of our re- 
ligion. Songs go up from emancipated Israel on the 
shore of the sea, from Miriam and from Deborah, 
from priests and levites in their ritual order, from 
prophets in wildernesses, from the king hunted in the 
cave or reigning in pomp, or penitent in sackcloth, or 
sorrowing in exile; from missionary groups all round 
the Mediterranean, from apostles in prison, from 
before the altars of all continents and islands where 
the cross has stood; everywhere the people sing. 
Ships of Tarshish sing; trees of the wood sing; in- 
habitants of the rock sing ; the tongue of the dumb — 
symbol of regenerated and liberated powers once bound 
in sin — sings; the mountains, pillars of strength, 
break forth into singing; the widow's solitary heart, 
the token of a comforted humanity, sings for joy." 

Several years after the invitation from the Church 
of the Messiah, New York city, a second offer was made 
and declined, and as a token of affection at that time 
Mr. Huntington and his wife received from some of 
his parishioners' a gift of a fine Chickering piano, 
an addition to their household which they both greatly 
appreciated. He writes to the generous donors: "I 
have always felt that there should be the gentle in- 
fluence of music in every home. There are times when 
I crave nothing so strongly and when nothing does 
so much to remove weariness and soothe anxiety, to 
cheer the whole soul and quicken its better affections 
and lift it upward." 



THE FIRST CALL 103 

There was another mark of affectionate regard 
from the South Congregational parish, presented to 
Mrs. Huntington. This was a portrait of their pastor, 
made by the celebrated crayon artist, Seth Cheney. 
His drawings are inspired by sentiment and spirituality, 
and it was universally conceded that the likeness of 
Mr. Huntington was one of his best achievements. 

Such frequent and thoughtful expressions of friend- 
ship from his flock so deeply strengthened the tie be- 
tween them and their minister that the final separation 
in 1855 was a painful one. Rev. Edward E. Hale told 
the story years afterwards, speaking of Harvard Uni- 
versity. H The college had received a new endowment. 
Miss Plummer of Salem had endowed a professorship, 
of which the incumbent was to be the minister and 
friend of the students. It was the professorship of the 
heart, not the head, she said. Those were in the days 
when Arnold's life made us feel how large a place 
religion takes in the conduct of such schools. The 
Corporation thought, and I think all men agreed with 
them, that this spiritual oversight of hundreds of the 
picked young men of Xew England — at the critical 
period of their life — was the first honor to which a 
clergyman was called, and probably the first duty. 
This post was first offered to Rev. George Putnam. 
When he declined, the choice fell upon Rev. Mr. 
Huntington." 

Writing to his sister, Dec. 1, 1854, Mr. Hunting- 
ton says : " Tell father I drive the Cambridge question 
out of my mind all I can, — dreading to meet fairly so 
responsible, so painful, and so difficult a decision. But 
I shall be obliged to face it soon. I cannot see that 
such a situation as mine ought to be left. I prize its 



104 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






independence, its variety of aspects and its wide reach 
of sympathies and opportunities." 

An informal notice had been received a few weeks 
previous, to the effect that the president and fellows 
of Harvard University were prepared to appoint him 
to the office of preacher in the College Chapel and 
Professor of Christian Morals. In April, 1855, the 
board of overseers took concurrent action on this 
appointment, not without some protest; one member 
of that body citing the fact that Professor Newman 
had gone over to the Church of Rome after a like 
experiment at Oxford, proving it " worse than a failure." 
The New York " Tribune" published a leading article 
entitled "A Jesuit Professorship," and notes of warn- 
ing were not wanting from other sources. But while 
it was charged that Harvard College had committed 
itself to the insidious inculcation of Unitarian doc- 
trines through personal influence over the students, 
the defendants claimed that the new professor was 
known to have strong evangelical tendencies, that 
no technically orthodox man could be nominated and 
confirmed under existing conditions, and that "there 
w r as great and urgent need of the introduction of some 
new restraining and elevating force into the university, 
to save its students from irreligion, atheism, and im- 
morality." It was this line of argument which ulti- 
mately decided Mr. Huntington to accept the position. 
He was called to preach to a congregation of unusual 
intelligence, the members of the faculty and their 
families, with the students of the university; "to 
give instruction on moral and religious topics through 
lectures or text-books; and by personal intercourse, 
by friendly services, by counsels and sympathies, by 



& 



THE FIRST CALL 105 

special conference and correspondence with parents, 
to act on the hearts and lives of the young men, en- 
deavoring to draw them to a Christian righteousness, 
to protect them against the temptations peculiar to 
their situation and to maintain among them a sincere 
and vital religion." 

His parishioners and friends sent him a communi- 
cation of twenty pages, containing remonstrance and 
argument against his acceptance of the "appointment 
which has caused us such griefs. " The reply to this 
memorial was lengthy, and went carefully over each 
point of the objections. In commencement Mr. Hunt- 
ington says : w For more than twelve years of my ma- 
ture life it has been the one supreme earthly purpose 
of my soul, to understand, to measure, to trace in all 
their bearings the interests of this flock, — to know its 
interior condition and its outward relations, its wants 
and exposures, the state of its families and individual 
members, — so that I might effectually instruct, and 
by any means aid and edify it. That any object 
should have been presented, which could make it 
seem possible for me to turn aside from this great 
privilege and passion of my soul is, of itself, no small 
proof that it has remarkable intrinsic demands on 
my attention." After a detailed and an affectionate 
review of the situation of the South Congregational 
parish and its future prospects, he proceeded to lay 
before them some of the principal considerations 
which led him to a conclusion favorable to the call to 
Harvard. 

"The students come in year after year, fresh from 
the atmosphere of home, with tender and susceptible 
natures, and forthwith they are put upon all the lower- 



106 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

ing and corrupting temptations of a strange scene and 
a great city, with none of the safeguards of domestic 
affection, and no Christian friend, whose office it is to 
stand at their side, to remonstrate against the sin and 
to encourage them in the way of right, to think of them, 
to love them, to attract them into pure companionship, 
to care for their souls. And what makes this case 
peculiar is that they are a community constantly 
shifting. For four of the most impressive years of life 
they remain in the college circle and then they scatter 
over the continent, bearing with them the characters 
they have formed, and the notions they have adopted, 
to be, for immense good or for opposing and incalcu- 
lable ill, the educated, the professional, and often the 
leading minds of the land. More and more, and each 
one including something like a hundred souls, this tide 
of thought and influence pours forth, as steadily as 
the streams run from foundations to the sea, and with 
impulses as constant as the throbs of the ocean on the 
beach, 'What the nature of that influence shall be, so 
far as our foremost university is concerned, is the 
solemn question now put before me. 

"Were the opportunities for external action, beyond 
the bounds of the college, and of Cambridge, which 
it is proposed to throw open to me by the appointment, 
clearly expressed to you, I think you could not but 
perceive that they will put into my power means of 
public service, not less but greater than I now enjoy. 
I have utterly misapprehended what is held out to me, 
if it should prove a cloistered retreat, or a scholastic 
confinement. I am not going there to shut myself in 
from the living forces of society, nor from the assem- 
blies of men. It is my conviction that the bond between 



THE FIRST CALL 107 

a literary institution and the mass of the surrounding 
people, in this age, ought to be close and vital." 

Finally Mr. Huntington enumerated some of the in- 
fluences which were brought to bear upon his accept- 
ance. "I have asked no man for his advice, feeling 
that issues must, after all, be decided within my own 
mind and conscience, subject only to the leadings of 
Heaven. But I have supposed that one of the ways in 
which God indicates to us his will, is by the deliberately 
formed opinions of wise and good and unprejudiced 
men. 

" That it is a practicable work and that I am a proper 
person to enter upon it has commonly been expressed 
with a warmth of feeling that I did not expect, and 
with a decision and fervor that have been exceedingly 
impressive. It has come to me from graduates of this 
and other institutions, from the presidents and pro- 
fessors of other New England colleges, from mer- 
chants and men of practical affairs, from different 
sects in the church, and different parties in the state, 
from the mothers and fathers of youth that may be 
scholars, and it has come almost with one voice. It 
has pronounced the appointment of a Christian teacher 
at Harvard College a relief to many apprehensions, 
and an occasion for public congratulation." 

To the South Congregational Society he pays this 
heartfelt tribute: "It is not exceeded, I believe, by 
any in the land, for strength in all parochial resources, 
for numbers, for harmony, for mutual kindness and 
consideration, for attention to the pulpit, for promp- 
titude and energy in every good undertaking proposed 
to its members, for the absence of all querulous or 
uncongenial or quarrelsome elements, for uniform 



108 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

patience and kindness and generosity towards the 
minister, and indeed for every attribute and quality 
which make up parochial character desirable in the 
eyes of the pastor. 

" I shall need your cordial sympathy and God-speed 
in the agonies of a separation, for though it will not be 
on my part a separation of the heart, nor the breaking 
of those precious and indissoluble bonds which have 
been woven by the prayers and intercourse and love 
of twelve happy years, in the deeper experiences and 
holiest purposes of life, it will be the parting of the 
pastoral relation and the necessary discontinuance of 
all our former offices of fellowship, and so it will be an 
act of unprecedented pain. I shall need your utmost 
consideration, your most gentle judgment, your 
Christian intercession." 

The following letter was written nearly a quarter of 
a century later by the Bishop of Central New York, in 
response to an invitation to attend an anniversary, 
the semi-centennial of the South Congregational 
Society. It is addressed to the Rev. Edward Everett 
Hale. 

Syracuse, Jan. 23, 1878. 
My dear Brother: — Returning from a long 
journey, I am too late in answering your very kind 
note of the 10th. The dear old " South Congregational M ! 
Not so old as I am, and not much older than you are, 
and likely to live longer than either of us. We have 
both done what we could in our several ways to add 
to its life. May God accept whatever in our service 
was right and pardon the rest! There must be a few 
in the parish who would recognize me if I could stand 



THE FIRST CALL 109 

up before them at the semi-centennial, and they would 
say: "His head has grown white, however it may be 
with his theology." I wish you would thank them for 
taking the advice I gave them when I went away in 
calling you to follow me. That was the last of a long 
and thick succession of most gracious and judicious 
compliances with my wishes. Their building went to 
Rome, and their minister went — whither he thought 
God called him, but their prosperity seems never to 
have forsaken them. How many honored and dear 
names I could mention of those who were with me 
from the beginning! And how much could be said of 
them! Give my love to all the children and kindred 
of all those who have fallen asleep. 
Believe me sincerely and faithfully, 

Your friend, 
F. D. Huntington. 






CHAPTER IV 



A NEW PATH 



11 Then said Christian, ' I perceive not yet but that this is my way to 
be desired herein.' And Christian set on his way, with his sword 
drawn in his hand." 

On a September afternoon in the year 1855 Mr. 
Huntington and his family drove from the Highlands 
through the winding country roads connecting the 
villages of Roxburv and Brookline, over the wooden 
bridge which crossed the Charles River and so on to 
Cambridge. A college bookstore, the post-office, 
and a few shops then made up the little business 
centre known as " Harvard Square." Beyond the 
grassy spaces of the "Yard," mostly open enclosure, 
with here and there an ancient structure among the 
trees, stood the old Observatory, marked by the cu- 
pola on the roof and a small octagon wing at the side. 
The building, converted into an ordinary mansion, 
was placed on a slope looking towards the Library, its 
little lawn screened by a tall hawthorn hedge from the 
dusty high-road, along which the hourly omnibuses 
still made their slow progress to the city. On one side 
was a long sunny piazza, the front door opened on 
Quincy Street, and to the north was a group of apple- 
trees and a stable. To this attractive residence the 
young Plummer professor directed his children's atten- 
tion as he came down the steps of the College office, 
and pointed out their future home- 



A NEW PATH 111 

Pleasant was the outward aspect and pleasant the 
associations into which the family was entering. Those 
were days marked by simplicity of life, without pre- 
tension and without display; by cheerful and intimate 
companionships; the pursuits of cultivated minds; 
an exchange of ideas which gave variety to familiar 
intercourse. It has been maintained that at no time 
in the history of our country was life so full, so free, so 
untrammeled, and so satisfying, as during those two 
decades which ended with the Civil War. Before that 
dark cloud settled over the land, with the subsequent 
change in fortunes and rapid increase of a wealthy 
class, social existence in a small community like that 
of Cambridge was an ideal one. The educational 
advantages of Mr. Agassiz's school attracted young 
girls whose birth and breeding were such that they 
brought with them from their homes in the Southern 
and Middle States the same fine manners which they 
found in the university town. Their presence added 
gayety to the winter festivities, while they on their 
part were cordially received into a company of young 
people rarely excelled in ease and refinement, beauty 
and wit. It was a time when customs were entirely 
American; before foreign travel had introduced the 
habits of Continental life. There was neither the 
glamour of great riches nor the unrest and discontent 
caused by changing standards and conditions. If the 
aspect was one of sobriety, if the outlook was restricted 
and daily events unexciting, there could not be dullness 
in a circle which included such families as the Agassiz, 
Longfellows, Danas, Nortons, Lowells, Palfreys. 
While the whole faculty could meet in one room in the 
little gothic cottage occupied by the president, the 



112 FKEDERIC DAX HUNTINGTON 

members of the college set were not too numerous 
to live together on terms of intimacy which precluded 
any stiffness or formality. The entertainments were 
many of them impromptu; for the elders a little sup- 
per or an evening visit ; for the younger carpet-dances 
or charades. The whole neighborhood gathered for 
a piano recital by Otto Dresel, a concert from the 
Mendelssohn Quintette Club, or readings from Fanny 
Kemble. Scenes from Shakespeare were enacted, 
clever plays improvised, or an operetta, with the score 
furnished by the musical department and the libretto 
supplied by the English and Italian professors. It was a 
time when every one read Dickens; his characters 
were as familiar as the local oddities in the streets, 
and when Mrs. Charles Lowell threw open her hos- 
pitable home for a costume party, it was the scene of 
many clever impersonations. President and Mrs. 
Sparks entertained distinguished guests, and gathered 
groups of friends weekly to partake of a hospitality as 
dignified as it often was unconventional. ^Tiat was 
worn, what was eaten, what china was set out, what 
kind of decorations prevailed, were at that time re- 
garded as strictly individual. Differences of taste 
might be good-naturedly discussed, but it was not con- 
sidered of consequence whether fashion was followed or 
strict etiquette observed. Each hostess entertained 
as best suited her convenience and her establishment, 
without ceremony and without competition. Strangers 
came from abroad, and were met with ease and a 
graceful welcome, sometimes at a formal banquet, 
sometimes at a simple household meal. Many of those 
beautiful and imposing dwellings are still preserved and 
are the pride of the community, but the spirit and 



A NEW PATH 113 

traditions of the past linger in hut a few. The rural 
setting in which they were placed, the green parks and 
picturesque groves, have disappeared. 

On the Norton estate a lover of solitude might 
wander for an afternoon through the footpaths which 
intersected its woods, ending in the secluded shade of 
Divinity Hall, and thus back to the town through what 
was known as "Professors' Row." Closing that vista 
stood the old gambrel-roofed house, celebrated by the 
poet Holmes as his birthplace. Across the common 
was the arsenal, with antiquated dwellings around it 
embowered in foliage. There were walled dooryards, 
where the lilac bushes blossomed bright in springtime, 
and the little gates swung out on the graveled path- 
way ; narrow lanes between stiff brick houses mellowed 
in tint; colonial mansions with prim pediments and 
porches, and garden beds edged with box. Everywhere 
the great elms overarched the roadways, and gave a 
sense of retirement and calm. The little town stretched 
only to the edge of the salt marshes and on the other 
side sloped away into the open country of the Middlesex 
farms, with glimpses of the winding river, the wooded 
Fells, and far away the stretches of forest on the 
northern hills. It was a place apart from the great 
marts of traffic, from smoke and dust and machinery; 
the atmosphere was wholly academic, the setting pro- 
vincial; the currents of life flowed on evenly and in 
placid content. 

Week-day prayers and Sunday services were held in 
University Hall, that noble structure which still bears 
testimony to the architectural supremacy of Bulfinch. 
For commencement exercises and other public occa- 
sions the college was permitted the use of the village 






114 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



meeting-house and it was there that on September 5 the 
induction took place of Rev. Frederic D. Huntington, 
D. D., as Preacher to the University and Plummer 
Professor of Christian Morals. The discourse was 
preached by Rev. James Walker, president of the 
institution; prayer was offered by the Rev. John 
Albro, pastor of the Orthodox Congregational Church, 
in Cambridge; the Scriptures read by Rev. Con vers 
Francis, professor in the Theological School ; the 
prayer of induction offered by Rev. William A. Stearns, 
D. D., president of Arnherst College, and the concluding 
prayer by Rev. John Pryor, D. D. The hymns were 
the inspiring invocation of Montgomery, " O Spirit of 
the living God," and an original composition written 
by Rev. William Newell, D. D., minister of the parish, 
beginning, — 

"Welcome, servant of the Lord ! 
Bear aloft the torch of truth." 

One of the entering class of that year described the 
scene fifty years later : — 

" We freshmen had been given seats in the back pews, 
but I can see, almost as plainly as if it were yesterday, 
the venerable Dr. James Walker, the then president 
of the college, standing on the pulpit platform, his 
fine countenance showing a wonderful blend of dignity 
and gentleness, and face to face with him, the stalwart, 
broad-shouldered figure of the younger man, to whom 
he was delivering the charge." * 

The president's sermon was a strong plea for the 
Christian education of youth in college, conceding, 

1 Rev. William Reed Huntington: Memorial sermon, "The Good 
Shepherd, " preached at Emmanuel Church, Boston, at the unveiling 
of the memorial tablet. November 26. 11)0,3. 



A NEW PATH 115 

however "in the main as true," that "the religious, or 
at any rate the Christian life is not a development of 
human nature, but something superinduced upon it, 
and wholly the work of grace." After citing history in 
favor of the university as preeminently the "child of 
the church," he said: "Of course it is no longer neces- 
sary that the teaching or discipline of colleges should 
make men theologians. The greatest change which has 
taken place of late in respect to education consists in 
this, that it has become a distinct profession. It is 
w r ithin the memory of some of us, when professors and 
tutors were taken, almost as a matter of course, from 
among clergymen and students in divinity; now as a 
general rule, a professor is as much a layman as a 
lawyer or a physician is. This change has made it not 
less, but more indispensable, that there should be a 
pastor of the college, to take care of its religious in- 
terests, and to conduct its religious services. It only 
remained to find the man ; that the selection has been 
made in wisdom, we have the best evidence of which 
the case admits, in the almost entire unanimity with 
which it has been made, and also the hearty concur- 
rence it has met with from the public, including the 
leading and best minds of all denominations." 

Mr. Huntington's reply expressed his sense of the 
dignity of the presence he was in, the variety of inter- 
ests there represented, declaring, "the best 'inaugu- 
ral 5 I could pronounce would be a confession of per- 
sonal insufficiency, and an invocation of all good 
men's prayers for the heavenly help. I wish to re- 
member, and I beg you, sir, never to suffer me to for- 
get, that my special and elect business here is to be a 
minister of Christ; not of nature-worship, which is 



116 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






idolatry, not of pantheism, which is superstition, 
not of a religion humanly created or developed, which 
is self-contradiction, not of an ethical philosophy, 
which has no Jesus for its embodiment and no cross 
for its symbol. You will not expect me to offer here 
my salutations or invitations to the members of the 
classes that I am hereafter to address. What is in mv 
heart for them — and I hope nothing that is not there 
— I am to say to them from week to week. If a cordial 
desire to enter in among them with genuine relations 
of simple good-will, — if a natural liking for young men 
and a large faith in their predominant traits, — if a 
profound conviction that the only religion which has 
either a right to be accepted among them, or a promise 
from HeaAen that it shall be, is a religion that is genial, 
magnanimous, earnest, direct, and positive, a religion 
that respects every manly instinct, comprehends every 
honorable feeling and scorns all but generous manners 
and considerate methods of approach, — and if a de- 
termination to be of any kind or degree of brotherly 
service among them that their free will may allow — 
if these are regarded by them as legitimate grounds of 
confidence or affection, then they and I shall be friends; 
and if friends then fellow-helpers to the truth. Then 
we shall do something together for the perpetual 
rededication of these ancient and honored halls to 
Christ and the church, and the scholars of human 
learning shall be kings and priests unto God." 

Cambridge, Nov. 10, '55. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

Dear Sister: — You will like to hear of our safe 
settlement in the new quarters. They are vastly bet- 



A NEW PATH 117 

tered by paint and paper and furniture. We have 
even some advantages that we never had at the dear 
old home on the Highlands. My study is charming, 
and I wish you could look in upon its coziness this 
morning. The fuss and pains of getting fixed have 
been enormous and can hardly be looked back upon 
without a groan. The thanksgiving at restored order 
is sincere. The expense incurred in all this and some 
other extra outlays can hardly be less than a thousand 
dollars, — a sum which I propose to raise this season by 
lyceum lectures. The correspondence arranging these 
is a sad encroachment upon time. Indeed, what with 
special tasks, and receiving calls, we have hardly yet had 
time to breathe. Cambridge people are certainly abun- 
dant in their attentions. Our rooms are stocked with 
flowers and fruits, and every kindness has been shown 
us. If only the Holy Spirit should awaken a Christian 
interest in the college, my joy would be complete. 

The house set apart for the Plummer professor 
made a delightful home. It was large and cheerful, 
ample in its accommodations and possessed some charm- 
ing features which delighted the children. There was 
a little inside window, swinging open above the landing 
of the staircase, through which of an evening would 
come the hum of voices when company was assembled 
below; strains of music from the piano, the accom- 
paniment of a song, or the lively tune of a dance. The 
professor and his wife enjoyed gathering young people 
around them. From the first Mr. Huntington set 
himself to become personally acquainted with the 
undergraduates and to entertain them under his own 
roof. This was not difficult at a period when the en- 



118 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

tering class numbered barely a hundred. It was the 
custom to invite the freshmen to Sunday evening tea, in 
groups of not more than eight, and those who cared to 
keep up the acquaintance were made to feel at home 
at any time. 

The intercourse of every-day life offered agreeable 
associations to the newcomers. They found two old 
Northampton friends living in Quincy Street. Harriet 
Mills was now Mrs. Charles Henry Davis, her hus- 
band the head of the "Nautical Almanac," and later 
a distinguished admiral. Sallie Mills was the wife of 
Benjamin Peirce, the great mathematician. Judge 
Charles P. Huntington had married a third sister Helen, 
so that there was a family connection. In the near 
vicinity were Governor and Mrs. AYashburn and their 
daughter, most highly valued friends; Professor 
Felton and his family; Professor Jeffries Wyman, Dr. 
Beck the German scholar, Professor Lovering, and his 
wife who was an old Boston acquaintance. The future 
honored head of the university, Charles Eliot, was then 
a young tutor and had lately married a daughter of 
Mr. Huntington's beloved associate in the ministry. 
Rev. Ephraim Peabody. It is remembered that one 
morning when two or three men came in with the 
chaplain for breakfast, after morning prayer at the 
College Chapel, there was a reference to the sermon of 
the Sunday previous and its subject Mr. Eliot, one 
of the company, quoted some lines from Mrs. Brown- 
ing's "Vision of the Poets," as appropriate. He after- 
wards sent them to the preacher and they were printed 
in the discourse entitled, "Salvation not from suffering 
but by it," when it appeared in the collection, " Sermons 
for the People." One of the constant morning guests 



A NEW PATH 119 

was Professor Francis J. Child, and for two winters lie 
occupied rooms in the house, living on terms of delight- 
ful intimacy with Professor Huntington. His warm, 
affectionate nature, delicate wit, and ardent disposition 
made him a congenial companion. 

Much more than in the social enlivenment was the 
change to a university town an agreeable one. There 
was greater freedom of thought, a larger outlook, and 
the stimulus arising from the prospect of a new field of 
labor. Since the days when Mr. Huntington was a 
student at the Theological School, new subjects had 
begun to interest men's minds, new teachers and investi- 
gators had come forward, and generous gifts responded 
to the demands of science and the liberal arts. A 
building was in process of erection for the researches 
in the Department of Chemistry under Professor 
Cooke. Not much later the Museum of Natural His- 
tory was founded, the beginning of which had become 
familiar to the inhabitants of Quincy Street. Not only 
did Professor Agassiz gather around him in his home, 
foreign savants of his own kindly and simple-minded 
character, but strangers of another order were domesti- 
cated, a huge turtle wandering around the dooryard, 
or tropical reptiles and snakes occasionally heard of. 
So much beloved was the great naturalist that even the 
children felt the benefit of his presence among them. 
In those days " nature study " as a subject of school 
curriculum was not known, but there was much in- 
terest in collecting specimens, and the boys entered 
with ardor into the pursuit. A group of them in the 
neighborhood formed a small society of their own, 
called "The Agassiz Natural History Society" in 
which Professor Huntington took much interest, giving 



120 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

them the use of the octagon room in his house, for 
their meetings. Associated together in this pleasant 
study were George Huntington, then thirteen years 
old, Constant Davis, son of the admiral, Benjamin 
Peirce and James Lovering, sons of professors, Frederic 
Ware, whose father was the author of u Zenobia," and 
Robert Peabody, later the well-known architect. 
Three of the number lived only to early manhood, one 
scarcely to middle life. 

George Huntington was always grateful for the in- 
spiration which awakened his interest, taught him ac- 
curate habits of observation and research, and enabled 
him to share with others, especially his children and 
near friends, the delight he experienced in birds and 
flowers. 

Professor Huntington wrote in later years: " I notice 
that on the memorial which is to be raised, at Cam- 
bridge, to Mr. Agassiz, it is proposed to omit all his 
long list of honorary titles, conferred by crowns, 
universities, and national societies, and to write after 
his name simply the word 'teacher.' The first honor 
belonging to his large mind, I conceive, was his rever- 
ence for the mind that is above all minds, for the person, 
creatorship, and fatherhood of God. His second honor 
was that he loved, with an affection as sweet as a child's 
and as strong as a woman's, everything that the Maker 
has made, from the mollusk up to man, and from the 
stars in the sky down to the starfish in the slime of the 
sea. Next to them, his glory was his passion and his 
power in giving to other minds the wealth of his own. 
The term that is to be carved on his monument, there- 
fore, is a tribute not only to the scientific master but 
to the calling he chose and followed to the end." 



A NEW PATH 121 

In the middle of the last century social life within 
the college grounds bore the same simple character 
as the functions outside. Seniors were satisfied to 
entertain their guests on Class Day in old Hoi worthy, 
and its steep stairways and low dingy rooms were the 
centre of fashionable gayety. There was but a limited 
interest in games. Football was played on the Delta 
and boat-races held on the Charles, with spectators 
gathered on the roofs of residences on the Milldam. 
One of these regattas, which occurred in July, 1858, 
was described by President Eliot at an athletic dinner 
more than forty years afterward. Although a tutor he 
took an oar to help out the undergraduate crew, and 
they won a glorious victory for the college, amid the 
plaudits of their enthusiastic friends. The president 
recalled that "w r e had no one to help us after rowing 
the six miles, and we just rowed back to Cambridge. 
I remember there was but one man to greet us, and 
that was the Plummer professor of those days." 

Without any great enthusiasm for sport, Professor 
Huntington was always an advocate for athletics and 
for manly, vigorous pursuits. As a country boy, bred 
to farm work, active exercises such as swimming, 
horseback riding, and skating w T ere a delight to him 
and w r ere encouraged in his children. He deplored the 
sedentary existence often engendered by the change to 
studious habits and college routine. The endowment 
of the new professorship had enjoined upon its incum- 
bent the promotion of the physical as well as the moral 
welfare of the students. When he removed to Cam- 
bridge there were very limited accommodations for 
gymnastic exercise. A demand was felt and somewhat 
loudly expressed, but the decisive step was taken by 



122 FREDERIC DAN HUXTIXGTOX 

Professor Huntington, who secured from a donor in 
Boston a sum sufficient to insure the erection of a 
building well equipped for those days. In the "Har- 
vard Magazine" of 18o9 it is mentioned with pride 
that "conservative Harvard should be the first of the 
colleges in this country to incorporate into its course of 
education an organized system of physical training." 

In August, 18oo, just before his induction at Har- 
vard, Amherst College, his alma mater, conferred 
upon Frederic Dan Huntington the degree of doctor 
of sacred theology. He was then thirty-six years of 
age, entering a new career full of hope and high aims, 
possessing the sympathy and personal magnetism 
which success in pedagogy requires, and thoroughly 
imbued with the deep responsibility of such a calling. 

In 1856 he published u Unconscious Tuition " which, 
in the form of a text-book for teachers, has been widely 
circulated throughout the land for a half century. 
Although a practical homily on the personal influence 
of the class room, it is much more, for it establishes 
the spiritual connection between pupil and teacher, 
without which education fails in its highest purpose. 

These words, written later, express what he himself 
always kept in mind. "Life is the test of learning. 
Character is the criterion of knowledge. Not what 
a man has, but what he is, is the question after all. 
The quality of soul is more than the quantity of in- 
formation. Personal, spiritual substance is the final 
resultant." 

It was in this spirit that work was taken up in the 
recitation room, on the playground, in the chapel. 
To reach the youth under his charge on the religious 
side of their nature was a vital and important question; 



A NEW PATH 123 

u to conduct the devotions so that they shall fulfill the 
manifest purpose of their appointment; have a spirit 
as well as a shape ; bring a devout sacrifice as well as a 
bodily attendance; diffuse a hallowing influence over 
the restless and eager life congregated there; awaken 
strong resolves and pure aspirations and call down 
the answer and benediction of Heaven." 

In an article on the subject of " College Prayers" he 
finds " the first condition of any adequate benefit from 
the service that it be treated by all that are responsible 
for it as a reality; as what it pretends to be; as real 
prayer." In those days the enforcement of attendance 
on the daily worship had its undesirable effect in the 
rush and haste of reaching the building at an early hour, 
and the mechanical aspect which the observance bore. 
The professor's wife found her sensibility shocked 
when the boys familiarly talked of " cutting prayers " 
and begged them to substitute some other expression. 
Mr. Huntington deplored any connection of the con- 
duct of worship with discipline. " In some seminaries 
it would seem as if the final cause for prayers were a 
convenient convocation of the scholars, as a substitute 
for roll-call. They must be somehow brought together, 
in order to come under the eye of a monitor and be 
counted, and so they are summoned to praise God." 

In his own practice he conformed to the simple 
custom for daily service, of prayer and reading of 
Scripture. With an uncommonly beautiful voice, 
thoroughly trained, and expressive; with a gift in 
prayer which was one of his highest powers for spiritual 
uplifting, even a careless and inattentive audience of 
immature youth might well at times feel a stirring of 
soul. In the closing passages of the article quoted he 



124 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

says: " Knowledge and faith have one interest, one 
aim, one God and Saviour to confess and serve; and 
therefore over every step in education, every lesson in 
learning, every day of the student's tried and tempted 
life, should be spread the hallowing peace and the 
saving benediction of prayer. Deep down in their souls 
students feel this. At least in their better moments 
they realize it. Even the most impulsive and incon- 
siderate have some dim, instinctive witnessing within 
them that it is good to call on God. Many an earnest 
believer has felt his first renewing convictions, the first 
strong grasp of the hand of remorse, the first touch of 
penitential sorrow, amidst these apparently neglected 
entreaties. The sure arrow from the Divine Word 
has there reached many a haughty and obdurate heart. 
Could the secrets hid in the hearts of educated men be 
revealed, we have no doubt it would be seen how large 
a part the college prayers bore in the hearts of initia- 
tion or the reinvigorating of their best designs. Many a 
man has there in silence said honestly and faithfully 
to his own conscience, 'To-day I shall live more 
righteously; meanness and sin shall be more hateful 
to me; generosity and goodness more lovely;' and all 
the day has answered to the pledge. Admonitions that 
would have been rejected if offered from man to man 
work their effectual plea in the indirect persuasion 
of a request to the Father of Lights. Noble friendships 
between young hearts have felt themselves more dis- 
interested and more secure for the holy appeal to the 
source, making each man feel himself a brother in the 
mighty fraternity of love. The noble claims of human- 
ity, girding him to labor and suffer for his kind as the 
only worthy calling of his scholarly life, have there 



A NEW PATH \25 

pressed their way into the heart of hearts through a 
elause of the Bible that speaks to the rich and the poor, 
or a supplication for sage and slave alike, for bond and 
free, for the heathen and the helpless. Eminent ser- 
vants of the best causes, disinterested patriots, preachers 
of Christ; missionaries to the ends of the earth have 
taken there the first impulse that bore them on to their 
places of heroic action or martyr-like endurance, — 
faithful unto death, awaiting crowns of life." 

Professor Huntington made himself acquainted 
with the students' daily lives and interests. Of the close 
relations established, the following tribute testifies. It 
was sent " in loving memory. It comes from the heart. 
I write of the things that never die. I entered Harvard 
in 1857. My impression is that the post of chaplain 
was vacant for some time prior to the appointment 
of the Rev. Mr. Huntington. When he became chap- 
lain he was a member of the faculty, but we soon 
learned that all confidences to him were sacredly kept, 
and that he had come to be the friend and adviser of the 
students. They gladly accepted him as such. He 
was trusted and beloved. He not only helped many 
to better resolutions and a higher life but he raised the 
standard of truth and honor throughout the college." 

Another says : " The university pastor was a frequent 
visitor in the students' rooms. He respected every form 
of religious thought and seldom referred to matters of 
faith, except when the voluntary remarks of students 
led in that direction. He often invited a number of 
students to his home. No favoritism w r as apparent on 
these occasions. Indigent and ungainly students from 
the rural districts were received with the same kindly 
welcome which awaited rich men's sons." 



126 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

One "who witnessed Dr. Huntington's devotion to 
the exigencies of the sick-room and the death-bed of 
students, and who has known with what eager confi- 
dence young men resorted to his study for spiritual 
counsel," adds: "His affectionate regard and kind 
treatment towards the young men, in their hours of 
sickness and sorrow, was more like that of an elder 
brother than a professional tutor, and his wise counsels 
and earnest labor for their religious advancement 
have been more like the solicitous yearnings of a 
devoted father than the discharge of the routine of a 
college professor." - 1 From another source : — 

"In 1859, at the age of fifteen, I was sent from my 
home in Maryland to take the Harvard examinations. 
In presenting myself for this purpose, Professor Hunt- 
ington was one of the first to interest himself in me. 
Noting my age, he strongly urged me not to attempt 
the arduous college course for at least two years, notwith- 
standing my apparent preparedness. Although an entire 
stranger he took me to his house to tea, gave me letters 
of introduction to Professor Park and Mrs. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, of Andover, commending me to their 
interest. I took his advice, and he gave me in addition 
a long and earnest talk about my religious duties, 
which I have always remembered with gratitude. I 
remained under his care until the clouds of civil war 
compelled my return and participation. The interest 
he manifested in me under these circumstances could 
never be forgotten, and it has always been an inspiration 
when similar opportunities have been presented to 
me. Consequently I have always held his name in 
great reverence and in loving remembrance." 

1 The Boston Recorder, March, I860. " Correspondence from 
Cambridge." 



A NEW PATH 127 

The years of Professor Huntington's residence in 
Cambridge, from 1855 to I860, were those of intense 
political feeling, high passions, and sectional bitterness. 
It was not partisanship, but the deeper struggle for 
supremacy of ideas which swayed North and South, 
while industrial and vested interests combined to com- 
bat the abhorrence, steadily growing in men's minds, 
of that policy of the national government which up- 
held slavery as supported by judicial authority. The 
household at Hadley had been nurtured in an ardent 
longing for the abolition of human warfare as well as 
of slavery. Elizabeth Huntington might well have 
expressed her own creed in the noble lines of Hartley 
Coleridge : — 

"Far is the time, remote from human sight, 
When war and discord in the world shall cease; 
Yet every prayer for universal peace 
Avails the blessed time to expedite." 

From the pulpit and in the press Professor Huntington 
had always borne vigorous testimony against tyranny 
and oppression, as a strong believer in freedom and 
national righteousness, but he had never allied himself 
w r ith the Abolitionist party. For Charles Sumner he 
had a sympathetic admiration, and in the heated at- 
mosphere after the assault upon the senator his indig- 
nation rose high with that of citizens of Massachusetts 
of all classes and predilections. 

In Cambridge a public meeting of protest was held 
June 2, 1856, and resolutions drafted by a committee 
with Richard H. Dana, Jr., as chairman. The pre- 
amble states the offense to be w defended and adopted 
by the slave-holding power, by their representatives 
and their press, and seen in connexion with the whole 



128 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

course of things relating to Kansas and with other acts 
elsewhere and heretofore, we recognize not an isolated 
act of one man, but a part of a system, not the accident 
of passion, but the effect of causes permanent in their 
nature, and increasing in their powers. We see in it 
part of a system which aims at the subjugation of free 
speech and free action in the free states, and in their 
representatives. We see in it a part of a system, the 
latest and most extreme encroachments of that fearful 
oligarchy of slave powers, which has usurped political 
domination and now threatens to spread a moral 
servitude over the land." * 

The resolutions declare a "solemn conviction that 
the time has come when the people of the free states 
must unite in one earnest effort to recover their per- 
sonal liberties and political equality and to retrieve 
the honor of the country. The Constitution puts in our 
hands, by legal and peaceable means, the power to do all 
this. Let it be done." 

The speeches on this occasion were from Professor 
Joel Parker and Professor Theophilus Parsons of the 
Harvard Law School, and Professor Huntington. Hon. 
Richard H. Dana presented the resolutions with re- 
marks which were received with great applause. From 
personal acquaintance he made this tribute to Mr. 
Sumner: — 

"When proposed as candidate for the Senate, the 
highest office Massachusetts can give, — while his 
election hung trembling in the balance, week after 
week, when one or two votes would secure it, and this 
or that thing said or done it was thought would gain 
them, nothing would induce Charles Sumner to take 
one step from his regular course from his house to his 



A NEW PATH 129 

office, to speak to any man; he would not make one 
bow the more, nor put his hand to a line, however 
simple or unobjectionable, to secure the result. I know 
— I have a right to say this — I know that in this course 
he resisted temptations and advice and persuasions 
which few men would not have yielded to." 

The words of Mr. Huntington at the close of his 
speech show the vehemence by which he himself 
was moved. " It has been well said that the New Testa- 
ment gives us not the Resolves of the Apostles, but the 
Acts of the Apostles. Sir, we must hold fast these fine 
sentiments we utter so fluently till they take shape and 
consistency in action. The summer heat must not wdlt 
them down ; the summer pleasures must not emasculate 
them; the early and latter rain must not dilute them. 
The autumn frosts must not wither them. We must 
keep them till next November. Then we must take 
them between our fingers, and put them into those 
boxes where are the fate-books of republics, — the 
treasury-chests of every wise and upright democracy. 
And if the Missouri rioters or the renegade knighthood 
of the Carolinas shall come on to snatch the very 
ballot-boxes out of our hands, then, sir, we must put 
them into — but Mr. Chairman, I am a member of the 
Peace Society [cheers and cries of ' Go on ']. No, it shall 
not come to that! 

"If we are faithful and true it shall not come to that. 
A great revolution is taking place, deep in the minds of 
men, one of those revolutions which never, never go 
back." 

An incident of that time is described in the " Memoir 
and Letters of Charles Sumner," by Edward L. Peirce. 

"As soon as Sumner's purpose to go to Boston to 



130 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

vote for Fremont was known, a committee of citizens 
waited on him and urged his acceptance of a banquet ; 
this invitation he declined, but he was unable to re- 
press the popular sympathy which sought expression in 
a public reception. This became an imposing demon- 
stration, unorganized, spontaneous, and heartfelt. A 
committee of whom Professor Huntington of Harvard 
College, since bishop of Central New York, took the 
lead, arranged that it should be 'without military 
display, but civil, dignified, and elevated in character.' 1 
(Professor Huntington's letter, October 10, 1856, to 
Sumner.) 

"Professor H. presented Sumner as one who 'had 
come, a cheerful and victorious sufferer, out of the 
great conflicts of humanity with oppression, of ideas 
with ignorance, of scholarship and refinement with 
barbarian vulgarity, of conscience with selfish expe- 
diency, of right with wrong ' This to the mayor. He 
was presented to the governor by Professor H. as one 
'whose friends are wherever justice is revered, who 
has a neighbor in every victim of wrong throughout 
the world, now returning to his state, her faithful 
steward, her eloquent and fearless advocate, her hon- 
ored guest, her beloved son.'" 

It has been mentioned in the correspondence of 
Professor Huntington that owing to the inadequacy 
of his salary to meet the expenses of his position he was 
obliged to devote part of his time during the winter 
months to the lecture field. In spite of the pressure of 
other duties, and the necessary absence from home, he 
enjoyed meeting audiences of thinking people and felt 

1 Edward Everett was first asked to deliver the address of wel- 
come but declined for political reasons. 



A NEW PATH 131 

the animation which numbers and enthusiasm give 
to a public speaker. That there was nothing of the 
commercial spirit in the contracts into which he en- 
tered may be gathered from the following anecdote, 
published in the " Utica Observer," of June 22, 1903. 
Speaking of Bishop Huntington, then the bishop of the 
diocese, the editor says: "It was when his pastorate 
of a Boston church was at the height of its brilliancy 
that he w-as induced to come to the interior of New 
York for the first time and to lecture before the Utica 
Mechanics' Association. His engagement had been 
made without a price being named. The chairman of 
the lecture committee, w T hen the arrangements w r ere 
otherwise completed, wrote to him to learn what com- 
pensation he would expect. The answer^ was unusual. 
1 1 have never,' he replied in effect, ' found myself able 
to affix a price to intellectual or moral labor. When 
the lecture has been delivered you may give me w T hat 
you will.' That letter, cherished for years, w T as burned 
in the ' Observer's ' fire in 1884 with many another epistle 
of less value from men ranking high in the lecture 
field. It w r as cherished as an illustration of the man so 
many of us have come to know better and to love and 
venerate so highly in these later years." 

There is a personal incident connected with these 
days of lecturing. In the library left behind by Bishop 
Huntington is a volume on the fly-leaf of which the 
text, " Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt 
find it after many days," w 7 as written under an in- 
scription made "with grateful love and esteem." The 
author of the book, a luminous and inspiring inter- 
pretation of Divine pow r er in the world, wrote in 
explanation of this tribute : — 



132 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






"I shall never forget or ever pass away entirely out 
of the influence of an address I once heard from you 
(thirty-three or thirty-four years ago) while I was a 
student at Williams College. For the first time I felt 
myself lifted by a clergyman's voice into an atmosphere 
of natural freedom with implications also, sweet re- 
straints, equally natural, that belong to the spiritual 
realm. It was the coming home to the Father's house. 
That firm and gentle voice will always remain in my 
memory. The vibrations have grown stronger during 
all these years, as into a triumphal psalm. Now they 
come back to you, in so far as I can utter them in the 
little book I send you." 

The occasion, still clear in the bishop's mind, had 
been remembered by him as a lost opportunity, owing 
partly to circumstances attending the delivery of the 
address. He was obliged to leave his country home 
very early in the morning, after a night of anxiety 
through illness in the family, and taking a long drive 
in wet weather across the hills, arrived to find in a 
close and heated hall, an audience wearied with pro- 
longed literary exercises. It seemed to him that his 
words fell lifeless and unproductive upon the ears 
of all present. When he learned long after of the 
effect upon one listener, he was deeply touched 
that the message which he deemed unheeded had not 
only wrought its work but was still passed on, through 
the eloquence of another's rendering, to many eager 
souls. 

In the winter of 1857-58 Mr. Huntington delivered 
a course in Brooklyn, the Graham Lectures, which 
were afterwards published under the title "Divine 
Aspects of Human Society." 



A NEW PATH 1S3 

Cambridge, Dec. 31, 1857. 

My dear Father and Sister: — I must couple 
you together, in the parting salutation of the old year. 
It is almost gone. As it draws to an end, my thoughts 
and my heart turn to you, to the old home, and I would 
fain seat myself w T ith you if I could, and watch the 
dying embers, and feel the spell of the past, and listen 
to the voices of the dead, and let the solemn hours 
drop into eternity in the very spot where my being be- 
gan. It always seems as if mother was nearer there than 
anywhere else. Uncle's departure has revived very 
vividly the feeling of her presence and the recollection 
of her face and form, and voice, and words. How 
much you must all feel this change. For although he 
has so long lived apart from the world, and even from 
the next houses, yet the consciousness that he was 
there remained, — and where the living are so few, 
one form is sadly missed. 

Though absent from you, I think I have realized it a 
good deal and followed you along with close sympathy. 
Death is a much greater event there than in a crowded, 
hurrying population like this. It is as if the gate into 
eternity swung wide open, and we could almost look in. 
If our faith in Him who is the " Resurrection and the 
Life" is genuine, the prospect ought not to give us 
sadness, or loneliness, or fear, but peace, confidence, and 
joy. . . . Christmas has come and gone. There was 
the usual profusion of presents, almost bewildering. 
Some of our neighbors kindly remembered us, and the 
families about us have been quite social. A great deal 
is done, in various ways, by lectures, concerts, fairs, 
tableaux, parties, &c, for the poor. I heard quite an elo- 
quent plea for them by Mr. Everett. But the merciful 



134 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

God of all has done more for them than all his creatures 
by ordaining such mild skies, and pleasant weather. 

Three of my trips to Brooklyn have been taken, 
and have proved rather pleasant, — furnishing an 
opportunity to visit various friends, and to hear promi- 
nent preachers, — of all sorts and styles, — Bethune, 
Tyng, Beecher, Storrs, Alexander. Only once I have 
preached — last Sunday morning for Storrs, in return 
for his favors to me in the same kind. The lecture 
audiences are grand, quite exciting, — some twelve 
hundred intelligent people in the hall, and a hundred or 
so standing crowded in the passages and on the stair- 
cases outside. 

April 5, 1858. 

To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

Yesterday was an Easter of uncommon outward 
splendor, and uncommon joy to our hearts. Seven 
students and three others came forward and joined 
the college church. The young men are full of promise 
and seem to be respected in this great step. 

I have waited long, and hardly dared to hope for 
such a sight. Many years have passed since any mem- 
ber of the college joined the church. God grant that 
others may come, and all stand fast. 

The distinctive revival movement does not hitherto 
appear much in the college institution, though there is 
unusual attention to religious things, and meetings 
are full. This week is the anniversary of mother's 
birth into the fullness of eternal life, and of her first 
earthly entrance upon it. 

Among Professor Huntington's published sermons * 
is one preached April 11, 1858, on the Sunday after the 

1 Christian Believing and Living. 



A NEW PATH 135 

preceding letter was written. An introductory note 
make- "a respectful and affectionate acknowledg- 
ment to the students of the college who received it 
with more than their usual attention, many of whom 
have asked for its publication, and whose uniform 
candor makes it a privilege to be their minister. May 
they all be 'taught of God,' and May hold on eternal 
life. 5 'This is life eternal, that they might know thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast 
sent." The subject of the discourse is "Permanent 
Realities of Religion and the Present Religious Inter- 
est." It deals with the subject of the revival meetings 
which in that year occupied the public attention to a 
marked degree. The words of the writer on a mani- 
festation not greatly in accord with the spirit of the 
denomination he represented are given in part. On 
the title-page is a quotation from Frederic W. Robert- 
son, then in the height of his influence. " Sin-laden 
and guilty men; the end of all the Christian ministry 
is to say that out with power — s Behold the Lamb of 
God.' — When we believe that the sacrifice of that 
Lamb meant love to us, our hearts are lightened of 
their load; the past becomes as nothing, — life begins 
afresh." The text was from Isaiah, lv, 6, 7: "Seek 
ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon 
him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, 
and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let 
him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy 
upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly 
pardon." The writer meets plainly an opposition to 
the movement acting through the community — set- 
ting aside the word "revival" as a mere name and 
stating instead "substantial facts, which for Truth's 



136 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

sake we ought to see, and seeing revere ; " the sense of 
sonship, the feeling of God's presence, a realization 
of sin, repentance, the need of sympathy, the value of 
human social prayer." Protests are made against 
religious excitements. "Excitements are of different 
kinds and degrees; excitements that come from the 
senses are full of peril; excitements which, necessarily, 
by a law of nature, must be followed by a reaction even 
into apathy, are hurtful. These statements are past 
question and need not be oracularly put forth every 
day as discoveries. Indifference so stolid that man, 
made to love God and goodness with all his heart, can- 
not abide in it, but has to be excited out of it, is also 
suspicious. A coolness so complacent that it must be 
broken up by a wrench of repentance, is also full of 
peril. Your worldly unbelief is hurtful. We have to 
set off exposures and dangers against each other, in 
this world, and find the safe way or the way of salvation, 
by coming as quickly as we can to our Guide. We shall 
probably estimate the harm of religious fervor very 
much according to our relative estimate of the impor- 
tance of religion itself. There are indiscretions, we 
hear. Xo doubt of it. The question is whether the 
indiscretions are so many, and so glaring, as to over- 
balance the palpable and lasting good that comes of 
engaging many people heartily in the new conviction 
that they have a spiritual, immortal capacity, and owe 
their lives to their Creator. When we have governments 
without indiscretion, colleges without indiscretion, 
manners, trade, navigation, over any sort of sea, with- 
out it, we shall have an administration of Christianity 
without indiscretion. But remember, the greatest in- 
discretion we can possibly fall into about religion, is 



A NEW PATH 137 

to let it alone. No man, it seems to me, who looks 
largely over the facts and phenomena of the Christian 
world, can dare to insist that all mankind shall take 
one outivard path to Heaven. The inward path must 
be essentially the same for all. There is but one Door. 
1 By me,' Christ said, ' enter in ; ' ' I am the Door.' But 
the ways that lead to the door, with slighter or greater 
divergence from each other, reach out at last, over all 
the intellectual territory of the great continent of hu- 
manity. Who shall not rejoice to believe that, through 
them all, pilgrims are pressing on, sincerely, patiently, 
humbly; with hope, with faith, that they may enter? 
'Now when the pilgrims were come up to the gate, 
there was written over it, in letters of gold, " Blessed 
are they that do his commandments, that they may 
have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through 
the gates into the city." God grant to his church 
ever new, deeper, more genuine revivals of pure and 
undefiled religion. May He pour out his spirit upon all 
flesh, in other Pentecosts, on every barren place, every 
cold church, every unprofitable heart." 

Oct. 2, 1856. 

To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

You will be interested to hear that a goodly number 
of our new class are religious men. Last Wednesday 
I invited together all the church members of the 
college (most of them of Trinitarian denominations) 
and addressed them on their peculiar duties as Chris- 
tian members of this college. It was an earnest, at- 
tentive, and very interesting assembly, of nearly a 
hundred young men. 



138 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Distinctively Mr. Huntington was a preacher, and this 
sacred calling was in his mind preeminent. His Sunday 
sermons were addressed not only to the large body of 
undergraduates and members of the other university 
departments, but to the professors and their families, 
whom he considered under his special pastoral care. 
He gathered the children into a Sunday school held at 
his own house, where classes were instructed; at one 
time by two students then standing in unusually close 
relations to the chaplain, — William R. Huntington 
and Francis J. Abbott. In the administration of the 
services he set himself to present an attractive and 
reverent form of worship. The building and com- 
pletion of Appleton Chapel, in October, 1858, were a 
source of great interest to him, gratifying both his 
strong aesthetic sense and his growing inclination to- 
wards churchliness in the outward manifestation of 
religion. In order to express his conception of public 
worship he prepared a service-book which was used 
on Sunday afternoons. 

Although this was done with the approval of the 
president, the innovation was not in accordance with 
the views of some of the faculty, and the attempt could 
not be called successful. The compilation was, as he 
himself explains in the preface, " a considerable de- 
viation from the Book of Common Prayer, that is 
recognized as the most complete body of liturgical 
exercises in our language." 

In the pages of his magazine Professor Huntington 
had for some years taken notice of the solemn sea- 
sons of commemoration of the Saviour's passion, 
resurrection, and ascension. In 1858 he reviewed 
"Christian Days and Thoughts" by Rev. Ephraim 



A NEW PATH 139 

Peabody, offering a heartfelt tribute to the reverent and 
devotional spirit of the book. M It strengthens the ten- 
dency which we rejoice to find growing and gaining 
on every side, to mark and keep the feasts and fasts of 
the church in a wise and truly catholic observance. 
If anything in laws of association and veneration is 
clear, it would seem to be clear that the time of Chris- 
tendom ought to be all measured and notched and 
consecrated by the leading events of our divine Lord's 
experience while he wore the form of our humanity, 
and thus the atmosphere of our ordinary existence 
be kept within the august influence of the supernatural 
age. It would nourish religion, sustain Christian order, 
enrich preaching and private devotion, and shed fresh 
beauty over the hard and practical aspects of our 
study and work." 

With this growing appreciation of the rich spiritual 
inheritance which has come down to us from the past, 
Dr. Huntington welcomed the selections from Lyra 
Catholica, Germanica, Apostolica, and other "hal- 
lowed minstrelsy of the Catholic communion, — the 
time being quite come when Christians who would be 
truly catholic cannot afford to lose the nourishment 
and consolation for the inward life which any branch 
of Christ's body supplies." Thus he wrote in that 
preface, which in June, 1858, commended to American 
readers the i( Hymns of the Ages," a compilation made 
by two devout women who were his personal friends. 
The introduction, which has been cited as an example 
of his " fine culture and pure English, " closes with the 
following paragraph. " From the whole vast range of 
Christian thought, experience, and imagination, — 
from the fresh melodies lifted in the morning air of the 



140 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Christian ages, — from that long line of consecrated 
and aspiring singers reaching back to the days of 
Constantine, — from among the lofty strains of Am- 
brose and Jerome and their strong fellow-believers, 
where the sanctity of centuries is so wrought, like an 
invisible aroma, into the very substance and structure 
of the verse that it would seem as if some prophetic 
sense of their immortality had breathed in the men that 
wrote them, — from the secret cells and the high Ca- 
thedrals of the Continental worship, where scholarship 
and art and power joined with piety to raise the lauds 
and glorias, the matins and vespers, the sequences and 
the choral harmonies of a gorgeously appointed 
praise, — from the purer literature of old England, 
embracing the tender and earnest numbers of South- 
well, and Crashaw, and Habington, and a multitude of 
better known besides, — these voices of faith are 
reverently gathered into their perfect harmony." 

In May, 1856, " Sermons for the People " appeared, 
the first bound volume of printed discourses which 
Professor Huntington published. The introduction 
contains a tribute to the South Congregational Society, 
for whom most of them were written, "a people that 
must always be to me, in a signification that stands 
alone, The People, — a people that I tried for thirteen 
years to help, whose harmony, energy and fidelity, made 
my work delightful, and whose constant kindness I can- 
not repay, save by these unworthy acknowledgments, 
and by an attachment that will never be changed." 

Of the sermons written for special occasions are 
several delivered before meetings of ministers; one at 
the Meadville Theological School; one to the Bos- 
ton Young Men's Christian Union ; one on u National 



A NEW PATH HI 

Retribution and the National Sin," of which a note saj - 
that **it was preached on Fast Day, 1851, soon after 
the passage, in Congress, of the bill known as the 
Fugitive Slave Law." Those who found in the later 
writings of the bishop of Central New York utterances 
on public matters which were attributed to the pes- 
simistic spirit of old age, may read in the stern ar- 
raignments of the young minister, at a time of intensely 
heated public feeling, the same unsparing rebukes to 
a community truckling with greed and oppression. 
"We may build barricades for our prison-houses, and 
plant guns and staves and chains about our victims; 
we may stigmatize or crucify the prophets that tell us 
the truth; we may rejoice in every fresh success of 
cruel usurpations over human freedom; but we cannot 
thereby stay the advancing steps of retribution, we 
cannot, by police or militia, by conventions or statute- 
books, by certificates of bondage or judicial forms, 
press down behind the eastern horizon that ascending 
sun which shall bring in the day of our judgment." 

Most of the readings were intended for private 
devotional use, and the large sale of the book, its 
multiplied editions and circulation among different 
classes of believing Christians, testify to the permanent 
place it gained in the hearts of the people. Of signifi- 
cance is a plea made in one discourse, for the better 
social and economic position of woman, on the ground 
that a fair and equal chance for the development of 
her powers had not been afforded her in the past. This 
was just at the period when a complaint was making 
itself heard from the platform, often exciting strong 
prejudice against those who had the courage to speak 
lor their sisters. 



142 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

The sermon on " The Christian Woman " has cheered 
and strengthened many, young and old, through its 
rare sympathy, while it holds up a pattern of com- 
plete womanhood in its beautiful delineation of con- 
secrated service. 

A discriminating critic said of the whole volume 
after its writer had passed away : — 

" Some of his later publications may have contained 
riper thoughts, but probably no one of them enjoyed 
so wide a circulation. The charm of these sermons, 
as, indeed, of all the sermons that he ever put into 
print, lay in a certain subtle interweaving of the prac- 
tical and the homely with the idealistic and the imagi- 
native. Always eloquent, but never turgid; weighty 
without ponderosity ; effective while leaving no im- 
pression that the preacher had been straining after 
effect, — these sermons justified their title, and 
not only reached 'the people,' but did the people 
good." ! 

The eight lectures delivered at the Graham Institute 
in Brooklyn and at the Lowell Institute in Boston were 
published in 1859 under the title, " Divine Aspects of 
Human Society." Thirty years later this book, which 
had been widely read, was reprinted. It is noteworthy 
that at the time of its first appearance, social subjects 
received so little attention that they were neither dig- 
nified by scientific treatment or included in courses of 
academic learning. When Lord Elgin wrote to the 
Hon. Edward Everett requesting the titles of American 
publications on social reform, the latter finding him- 
self unable to furnish any such list, notwithstanding 
his wide acquaintance with literature, applied to the 
1 Rev. W. R. Huntington : Memorial Sermon. 



A NEW PATH 143 

Plummer professor at Harvard as the only man likely 
to give the desired information. 

A teacher of ethics, with a strong love for humanity, 
Professor Huntington was an earnest student of history 
and of social progress. Thinking minds of that gener- 
ation had become familiar with communistic theories 
through the experiments made by the disciples of 
Fourier and Robert Owen, while from across the water 
came echoes of that sympathy with the Chartist move- 
ment expressed by Frederic Maurice and Charles 
Kingsley. Mrs. Browning's hero in "Aurora Leigh" 
was described as "elbow deep in social problems." 
The large and intelligent audiences, who at that time 
listened to public lectures, gave eager attention to 
Professor Huntington's exposition of the Christian 
basis of relations between man and his fellows, of 
mutual help as a divine appointment, of the law 
of advancement, of the sphere of Christ's kingdom 
upon earth. In after years the lofty conceptions of the 
university professor entered into realization when, as 
a leader of men, his influence was given to movements 
for the advancement of the interests of labor, for the 
reclaiming of the criminal, for the education of the 
Indian and of the colored race, for equal political 
and industrial conditions. 

In the midst of the many calls and distractions of the 
Boston and Cambridge life the Hadley home never 
lost its hold upon Professor Huntington, and he fre- 
quently found a few days' leisure to spend with his 
brother and sister and their aged father. 

In 1857 Rev. Dan Huntington printed for his de- 
scendants a series of reminiscences under the title of 
" Memories, Counsels and Reflections by an Octoge- 



144 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

nary." His youngest son gave his personal attention 
to the publication, having himself a strong interest 
in the preservation of family tradition and in the ties of 
kinship. His pride in the place of his birth and strong 
affection for it are expressed in the oration he was 
asked to deliver at the bi-centennial of the town of 
Hadley, held in June, 1859. In this address he de- 
scribes in vivid portrayal the events which led to the 
founding of the town, its early history, the period of 
the Indian wars, the concealment of the regicides in 
the old parsonage, the educational development of 
Hopkins Academy, the lives of those who "governed 
the flock," in the words of the epitaph on the tomb of 
the first minister, John Russell. He closed with a touch- 
ing allusion to the village cemetery, making an appeal 
for its pious care and more attractive preservation. 

" It is right that our long review of the generations 
of the living should halt here where every generation 
and every procession halts at last. Through the gate- 
way of mortality every review must pass. There every 
histQry must be sifted. A hundred years hence, how 
many coming after us will have entered! To those 
who shall gather to celebrate the third centennial, 
what strange and quaint antiquities the surviving 
specimens of our customs and fashions and dwellings 
and forms of speech will be. But this we know: and 
let this be our consolation : humanity, duty, character, 
goodness, truth, freedom, faith, hope, charity, will 
all be unchanged — keeping their loveliness and 
majesty forever." 

Always ready in after-dinner speechmaking, and 
admirable in anecdote, Dr. Huntington never per- 
mitted his gift for pleasantry to lead him into the 



A NEW PATH 145 

excesses of an habitual story-teller. On this occasion 
at Hadley, the banquet which closed the day called 
forth one of his most genial moods. He was surrounded 
by the familiar faces of his townsfolk, and by distin- 
guished guests, a goodly company gathered to do 
honor to the historic town. The toast to the orator 
of the day seems prophetic, in the light of subsequent 
years: "May his active life find solace and vigor, and 
may his age reap the fruits of serenity and peace, 
amid the placid retirements of his native Elm Valley." 

His concern for the community w r as, however, far 
deeper than the interest stirred by a passing pageant 
or any exchange of felicitations. In the spring of 1859, 
after a few days at the old homestead, he wrote : — 

" All the incidents of my little visit w r ere pleasant and 
satisfactory, and are agreeable to recall. The points 
that occur to me as causes for special gratification 
were the signs of comfort and peace in the old house, 
and father's evident health. The tea at Major Syl- 
vester's was a pleasant episode. I ought also to men- 
tion, as a reason for honest and general thankfulness, 
that so many of you are finding a sympathy and enjoy- 
ment in the religious opportunities of your own neigh- 
borhood. I hope nothing will occur to arrest that 
tendency or to disturb the more liberal and spiritually 
earnest state of things growing up in the tow r n. If so, 
the past — or all that was wrong or painful in it — 
may best afford to be forgotten." 

At this time the family at Elm Valley were wor- 
shiping w 7 ith the Russell Church in Hadley, under a 
Congregational minister w T hose pastorate w^as in every 
way acceptable. In response to an invitation to de- 
liver a lecture in their meeting-house, Professor Hunt- 



146 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

ington wrote, March 18, 1859: "There is no pros- 
pect that my duties will allow T me to go to Hadley 
before the celebration. I would a little rather also, 
all the past considered, that my first acceptance of a 
ministerial invitation to appear in public in Old Hadley 
should be strictly in the line of the ministerial office. 
If the good old sound orthodoxy of the Front Street 
keep going on in the last of the three apostolic graces 
a while longer, as fast as it has for the year past, and 
if I should continue growing in favor, on the other 
hand, with the Israel of the faith, perhaps the two 
parties — they and I — may meet. In that case, it is 
only to be hoped we should not pass each other with- 
out a recognition." 

Each summer Professor Huntington took his wife 
and children back to the old home, so that the earliest 
memories of the little ones were associated with it. 
After such a sojourn he wrote in July, 1859, to his sister : 
" We have to content ourselves with happy memories 
and sweet thoughts of your green meadows and still 
waters, — not unmixed with deep desires and prayers 
for the peace and welfare of you all. May God answer 
them and bless you." 

The family life in the Cambridge home was a 
delightful one. The parents were not too absorbed 
in outside interests to give time and sympathy and 
companionship to their children. The older ones re- 
ceived every advantage of schooling which the period 
afforded, with private instruction in drawing and 
French. As a boy in the old country home their father 
had been taught to find his chief pleasure in reading, 
and he supplied his own household with the best books, 
often selecting for them some volume suited to their 



A NEW PATH 147 

special tastes. From earliest childhood they became 
familiar with beautiful verse, listening to him while he 
read aloud his favorite poems, with an exquisite ex- 
pression and sympathetic rendering rarely excelled. 
He taught them to learn hymns as soon as they could 
read, and took a strong interest in the selections for 
their school recitation. His gift to his eldest daughter 
on her tenth birthday was a copy of Keble's " Christian 
Year," a work already familiar on his study-table. 
All literary enjoyment was so ardently shared by the 
head of the family with the home circle, that a culti- 
vated taste was naturally developed which excluded 
attractions less elevated and refined. Out-of-door 
pursuits and healthy activities were equally encouraged. 
It was a happy event when the busy professor could 
take the children for a skating expedition or a sleigh- 
ride, and such delights were eagerly anticipated, with 
occasional drives through the lovely country which 
then stretched unbroken on the confines of Cambridge. 
The freedom of suburban residence permitted the 
possession of live creatures, a luxury not suited to 
city life but which was a feature of these earlier days, 
No road was too long for the energetic and hardy 
frame of the professor, if he had a good horse and the 
reins in his own hands, and many an engagement for 
preaching or lectures w T as kept through a drive across 
the state; while his favorite companion was a fine 
dog gamboling before him on a walk, or curled up by 
the side of his study chair. There was much rejoicing 
in November, 1859, when a second daughter was born. 
The youngest child, Jamie, was five years old and a 
universal favorite, having an unusually winning and 
social disposition. His father writes that the only 






148 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



consciousness he showed of being dispossessed from 
the position he had occupied in the household was 
"when the baby was getting the attention and admi- 
ration of the whole room, he drew up very soberly to 
his mother's side, and said to her in a low voice, 
' Mamma, do you like me ? ' " 

Cambridge, Nov. 20, 1859. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

Dear Sister: — This is Thanksgiving week. Cold 
and small must any of our hearts be that do not find 
abundant cause for cordial praise. In our own family 
in its different branches, how many cases of mercy, 
healing, deliverance, protection, bounty; new lives 
given and old lives spared, — plenty and affection 
for all, and for all the immortal hopes of the Gospel 
of salvation. As we have no service in the Chapel that 
day, I preached my Thanksgiving sermon this morn- 
ing, from the text, " Who layeth the beams of his 
chambers in the waters." God's steadfastness amidst 
man's fluctuations; illustrated in the outward world, 
in society, history, institutions, affairs of religion, — 
with three duties inferred : gratitude, trust, loyalty, 
with their three expressions, — thanksgiving, prayer, 
obedience. The whole psalm (104th) is one of the 
sublimest. Herder thinks that Milton borrowed from 
it the inspiration of the morning hymn of Adam in 
Paradise. 

Cambridge, Dec. 25, 1859. 

To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

Dear Sister: — To-morrow I intend to send a 
package of books by express. I hope all of you whose 
names are written in them will accept them as a de- 



A NEW PATH 149 

signed and cordial gift. It has all along been my in- 
tention to give them, and the lectures have been 
kept back only to go in the same bundle with the 
sermons. The two volumes together may be said to 
have pressed into them, and expressed through them, 
the greatest amount of my inner life and thought for 
the last three years. God knows how earnestly I have 
prayed that they might do good and not evil; that 
their error might be overruled and their truth accepted, 
and our Blessed Lord's honor and cause be in some 
way and measure advanced by them. 

Yesterday was a day full of sacred interest to us. 
Some of the Roxbury relations were with us, and a few 
intimate friends coming in, the holy ordinance of 
baptism was administered upon our dear little Ruth 
Gregson, — a domestic service, in our parlor at four 
o'clock. The Chapel has hardly become enough like 
a church to us to lead us there. Join your prayers with 
ours, that the new and precious life thus brought into 
the living body of the church on earth may also be 
made a member of the invisible and eternal church 
which is one on earth and in Heaven. 

Scarcely had this service ended when we went to our 
public Christmas Eve worship in the Chapel, at five 
o'clock. The interior had been beautifully dressed 
with evergreens, — including cross and star, and the 
inscriptions on the college seals, on opposite walls 
in evergreen letters: "Veritas" and "Christo et Ec- 
clesise." The building was full of people, and the 
exercises seemed very reverential and impressive. 
They were liturgical, much like our usual afternoon 
worship, only adapted to the Saviour's birth-night. 
The music by the students was solemn and touching. 






150 FREDERIC DAX HTXTIXGTOX 

This seemed a fit mode of ushering in the festivities 
and joys of the season. We then returned home, and 
the children distributed their presents with the usual 
good cheer. After the house had become still, about 
half past ten o'clock, as I was sitting in the study 
preparing for the holy duties of to-day, suddenly most 
delightful music, in youthful voices, broke out under 
my window. I raised the curtain, and there stood a 
picturesque group of singers, mostly young boys, 
muffled in cloaks and shawls, with lanterns, under 
the sparkling stars in the frosty night air, pouring out 
Christmas carols, — genuine old English carols. — 
in music and words wholly peculiar, and beautiful 
exceedingly. At first I was puzzled to make them out. 
I noticed that whenever they spoke the name of Jesus 
they bowed the head. Altogether the effect was re- 
markable, — as if I had been transported back into 
the ages of old romance and faith. On going out to 
ask the strangers in, they greeted me with a "Happy 
Christmas." They proved to be the choir of the Epis- 
copal " Church of the Advent" in Boston, whom one 
of our neighbors worshiping there had brought out to 
his house here, where I presently joined them. It was 
an old-country church custom for these companies, 
called "waits, ? ' to carol in this way, on Nativity night, 
under the rector's window. You know the pathetic 
and moving character of the music-voices of boys. 
This formed a charming conclusion to the day. 

In another letter referring to this event he says: " It 
was as if something from Bethlehem and Fatherland 
had blended graciously, and floated down through the 
starlit and frostv air to our door." 



A NEW PATH 151 

Cambridge, Jan. 1, 1860. 

Dear Sister Bethia: — With all my heart, as the 
sun of the first day of the New Year goes down, in the 
stillness that rests upon the pure white earth, amidst 
the Sabbath feeling always deeper at this hour, let me 
offer, before you and our dear father, the fervent and 
devout wish that this year may be happy, and good, 
and crowned with heavenly blessings, to you both, 
from the beginning to the end. May you be blessed in 
basket and store, in body and soul, in affection and 
faith, in the joys of this life, in " the means of grace, 
and the hope of glory." We have just come in from our 
afternoon service, where we sang old " Benevento," 
and read the gracious 103d Psalm. The text this 
morning was from the Parable of the Tares ; the ser- 
vant's mistake and sin in not using his one talent. 

You remember mother's interest in peace. This 
gave me interest in giving an address last Monday, 
before a Peace Society in Providence, in connection 
with Christmas. Our term ends two weeks from next 
Wednesday. I hope to see you all, the last week in the 
month. 

With steadfast affection yours, 

F. D. H. 

The sun of the second Sabbath of the year has gone 
down in a flood of silent glory and as his beams have 
gradually faded away, the splendor of the moon has 
filled their place. It is a perfect night, after a day 
perfect in its kind, but very w r arm for the season. I 
wish you could look in upon us and spend the evening, 
at least. We have fitted up the back parlor and now 
take tea here. Among several new pictures in the room 
is one just given to Arria, — a large and handsome 






152 FREDERIC DAX HUNTINGTON 

engraving of Raphael's "Transfiguration." I have 
been reading aloud to Jamie, who shows great sensi- 
bility, dear child, to spiritual impressions. He has 
learned, of his own accord, " the Apostles' Creed " and 
repeats it with us when we say it, as well as the Lord's 
Prayer. Little Ruth, who has learned to smile in our 
faces, is upstairs asleep. George is busy with his books. 



CHAPTER V 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 



" This is a valley that nobody walks in but those that love a pilgrim's 
life ; yet I must tell you that in former times men have met angels 
here." 

From the preceding chapter it may be seen that the 
years between 1855 and 1860, the term of Professor 
Huntington's residence at Harvard University, were 
filled with interests and activities thoroughly congenial 
to his tastes and aspirations. As a teacher he was 
brought in contact with the minds of bright and eager 
youth; as a preacher he counted among his hearers 
men of intellect and reputation; he addressed large 
and cultivated audiences from the lecture-platform; 
found wide opportunity for religious influence through 
the press and in his published writings; mingled with 
society under its most engaging aspects; lent his aid 
to movements of widespread beneficence. From first 
to last, his own denomination conferred upon him 
almost every distinction which official station and 
appointments for ceremonies and celebrations could 
afford; in representative gatherings of charities, agri- 
cultural societies, library associations, commencement 
occasions of nearly every New England college, his 
words were listened to with sympathy and appreciation. 
And yet this entire period was one of intense anxiety, 
of great mental strain and spiritual distress. 



154 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

He said of himself that his sufferings sometimes 
amounted to agony, in uncertainty as to the Divine 
will, in conflicting views as to the demands of con- 
science, in the prospect of breaking precious ties, in a 
renunciation of much that he held dear. Alone in the 
struggle he was "thrown upon God in solemn soli- 
tude." 

The first direct step which he took to free himself 
from any trammels as to expression of opinion was 
in 1856 when he added to the title of the "Monthly 
Religious Magazine," of which he occupied the edi- 
torial chair, the name "Independent Journal," with 
an explanation, to which he thus refers in the following 
number. "Denominations, nowadays, strangely over- 
lap each other, and get mixed. To be clear of all 
sects is not to stand between any two, nor to court 
the favor of any. Our own aversion to the Unitarian 
name, and our desire to be independent of it, arises 
partly from a belief that that term is not a descrip- 
tion of our religious convictions on several import- 
ant points, and partly from a settled distrust of the 
general influence of the sectarian measures it covers, 
rather than from any want of friendship for its men, 
or of appreciation of its freedom." In these same 
spring months the columns of the periodical were 
opened to an article on "The Relation of the Atone- 
ment to Holiness," from the "New Englander," by 
the Rev. S. YV. S. Dutton; a letter on the same 
subject by Rev. E. B. Hall, D. D., with remarks; a 
reply by Rev. Mr. Dutton, and a second letter from 
Dr. Hall. In introducing the first, by a conspicuous 
clergyman of the Orthodox Congregational Church in 
New Haven, already on fraternal terms with Professor 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 155 

Huntington, the latter states that " it is a reprint entire 
of the ' Coneio ad Clerum ' delivered before the Gen- 
eral Assoeiation of Connecticut last July. It must 
be borne in mind that it received the evident and 
full approbation of that rather orthodox body ; though 
we are aware that to mention that circumstance will 
prejudice its reception with some persons whose lib- 
erality is rather in name than in reality. Others will not 
fail to be nourished by the truths it so fervently pro- 
claims, finding something there that meets their hearts, 
and gratified by the encouragement it gives to the hope 
that clear and consistent statements shall yet be found 
for vital theological doctrines in which earnest be- 
lievers can agree." 

In response to Dr. Dutton's arguments, Dr. Hall, a 
Unitarian minister of age and learning, asked in his 
communication for Scriptural proofs of the doctrine. 
The whole controversy is reviewed at length in the 
quarterly issue of the "New Englander," Congre- 
gational, for May, 1856, on the ground that " Professor 
Huntington occupies a public position, of incalculable 
power over the religious convictions of the American 
people. Every parent who is desirous of educating 
his boy has an interest in ascertaining the nature of 
that religious teaching to which he will be subjected 
in the oldest and wealthiest university of our land." 

An extract is given from an article on "The Divinity 
of Christ " published in the " Monthly Religious Maga- 
zine "for May, 1851, in which Professor Huntington 
says: "We believe, therefore, we cannot but believe, 
we are as unable as we are un desirous to doubt, that 
in regard to that deep, wide line that distinguishes the 
Infinite from the finite and the Divine from the human, 



156 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Christ the Redeemer does not stand by his nature on the 
human side. We discover no way in which an estranged, 
lost family on earth, not knowing God by all its wis- 
dom, and condemned by a law which it had not power 
or will to keep, could be raised, restored, and justified, 
but by one who should bring the Deity to the earth, 
while he lifts up man towards Deity. The Redeemer 
must make God manifest in the flesh, mediate between 
heaven and humanity, show us the Father to move 
and melt the child." 

The writer in the "New Englander" goes on to say 
of the passages quoted, that although ' the animus 
of the entire production cannot be apparent as in 
the eloquent whole, these few blossoms will show the 
nature of the mind whose fruit was then but forming, 
and which we trust may long continue to ripen rich 
earthly harvests, before transplanted to the Paradise 
of God and of the Lamb." 

It is significant that while Professor Huntington 
closes the discussion in his " Monthly" with an ap- 
peal to the Unitarian denomination to enter upon fresh 
studies of the life of Christ, "and to reach beyond 
the old standards for views which promise a pro- 
founder peace to the heart," the reviewer proceeds 
with an inquiry whether such a candid exposition of 
belief would entitle its exponent to be received into 
the orthodox fellowship. "He has in a manful spirit 
addressed his old companions by a free and frank 
avowal of disagreement with their opinions. He does 
not ask to publish in our periodicals his confession of 
faith; but he publishes our confession in his own 
monthly, for the benefit of his Unitarian friends, and 
explains and defends its principles. Has he not the 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 157 

same claim on our sympathy and recognition, which 
those fathers of our churches had, who left their own 
communion at the commencement of the present cen- 
tury and sundered their ancient associations at the 
expense of personal ease and consideration ? Let any 
one w r ho wishes to be informed of the parallel, peruse 
the strictures on Professor H. in the Unitarian papers, 
or read his remarks on the discussion. Moreover, he is 
coming forth from his childhood's faith, and from all 
his earlier habits of religious belief; while those W'ith 
w^hom w T e have compared him only separated from their 
friends and teachers because the latter avowed doc- 
trines which they had not imagined them to hold, — 
doctrines which were directly at variance w r ith the 
public confession of the churches where they min- 
istered. Ought not the memory of that severe trial to 
quicken the generous yearning for a mind that is strug- 
gling to obtain the truth, and brave enough to accept 
and avow it w 7 herever discerned ? " 

It will be seen by this open vindication in a periodi- 
cal which circulated extensively through New England, 
that the position of Professor Huntington in the reli- 
gious world w^as a subject of wide interest. He had 
neither concealed the differences of belief w^hich 
separated him from his brethren nor had he gloried 
in them. 

His withdrawal from the "Monthly Religious 
Magazine" in December, 1858, was due to a desire 
for relief from "fourteen years of editorial work and 
time for other studies. Considering the mutabilities 
of modern journalism, this is long enough to establish 
a respectable reputation for constancy. Considering 
all things, it is long enough for edification. 



153 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

"In the confidence that the future progress and pro- 
sperity of the church depend on a nobler catholicity, 
a more simple and direct communion between the 
believer and the person and the heart of Christ, we 
have striven hard not to speak of any religious organi- 
zation, or any earnest disciple, with bitterness. But 
he must be a slight observer of the mysteries of his own 
nature, who does not know that these biases creep 
upon us in unsuspected signs. We are not unwilling 
to acknowledge that we have printed some words, 
under what now seems a mistaken impression of duty, 
which we would gladly blot out. For all needless of- 
fenses, against men or bodies of men, we sincerely 
declare our shame, and ask forgiveness. 

"No attempt has been made to turn this journal into 
a vehicle of the editor's theological belief. We have not 
been anxious that a complete creed, not even that our 
own creed, should be gathered from its pages. On 
many points, and those not the least vital to Christian- 
ity, regarded as a body of truth addressed to the mind, 
our views have undergone serious modifications since 
we slipped, half accidentally, into this editorial chair." 

Many years afterwards Bishop Huntington wrote out 
the history of his religious experience during those 
years of unrest. We have already given his estimate 
from the point of view of later life, of the Transcen- 
dental Movement. He had felt with other minds of his 
generation, the quickening influence of philosophic 
idealism. Speaking of himself in the third person he 
goes on to say : — 

" It appeared to H. that beneath the shiftings on the 
current of speculation there was a change at work in 
the whole doctrinal basis of the denomination to which 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 159 

he had belonged. Doubtless that the jejune self-inter- 
ested moralizing of the Priestley and English Socinian 
school should be spiritualized by a lofty appeal to con- 
sciousness and insight under a direct power of the spirit 
of God, was an immeasurable gain. St. Paul proclaimed 
an eternal law when he wrote, 'Spiritual things are 
spiritually discerned.' But Christianity is a revelation. 
Of that revelation there is a record. Its credentials, its 
history, the general and reverential consent of eighteen 
Christian centuries, its marvelous power over civilized 
peoples, hardly less than miraculous, invest it with 
tremendous sanctions. There is no trace of anything 
like Christian culture apart from its authority. In open 
questions it has been what there must be, a court of 
ultimate appeal. Hitherto H. had seen it so held, as 
well in his own as in other Protestant bodies. Through- 
out the Unitarian and Trinitarian polemics that ap- 
peal had been made with confidence on both sides alike. 
The main question was : What do the scriptures teach 
and mean? It was a question of interpretation of 
documents, hardly a question whether the documents 
were authentic and binding. ... In the short space of 
twenty years the Unitarian press and pulpit virtually 
ceased to make a stand on the foundation which had 
been known as the Word of God. . . . 

" Broad room was opened for more extensive relaxa- 
tions. Individual independence is a rapid but bold 
rider, and drives with loose reins. Institutional Chris- 
tianity began to be regarded more as a superstition 
than as a safeguard or an obligation. Ordinances were 
optional. All beliefs were elective. Sacraments were 
not sacraments, except in figures of speech ; they might 
be serviceable or not. . . . Any distinctive divinity in 



160 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






Christ, the personality of the Holy Ghost, a sacrificial 
redemption, a permanent and hereditary disease of sin 
in human nature needing such redemption by a sec- 
ond Adam or head of the race, were emphatically if not 
passionately rejected, whether as facts or dogmas. . . . 

" There would be from a believing past and from many 
side sources of God's gracious help, high-toned fam- 
ilies, pure lives, encouraging and enlightening preach- 
ing, ardent reformers; but it is difficult to see how 
practically the upshot could be escaped that everybody 
is to do, in this world of temptation, error, and folly, 
what is right in his own eyes. That in his own eyes 
right would always be right, would, in that case, be 
nothing more than a charitable hope." 

" It happened that H. was for thirteen years engaged 
in the diversified ministrations of a prosperous city 
congregation mostly gathered within that period of 
time, acquiescing in Unitarian views and plans, sur- 
rounded by attached and reasonable parishioners, 
with no sort of external obstruction. If he remained 
ignorant of anything doctrinal or practical, anything 
of public policy or esoteric consideration, anything 
of form or spirit, anything in charities or aggressive 
enterprises, belonging to his denomination, it certainly 
was not for want of opportunities of knowledge. With 
the ministers of that denomination he enjoyed with a 
keen relish the warmest friendships. On occasions 
when it might be expected he advocated and defended 
orally and in print those constructions of Scripture in 
which he had been brought up. In all quarters his 
treatment by his brethren was in the amplest degree 
generous and trustful. Gradually, however, he dis- 
covered that what he was most heartily and anxiously 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 1G1 

teaching was less and less in accordance with the de- 
nominational spirit and form. 

" When set to speak for 'the cause ' he did it with a 
diminishing zeal. With some pain he became aware 
that he was oftener in a vein of criticism than advocacy, 
and that he probably disappointed his audience by 
unfavorable comparisons between their negations and 
the positive creed of a historical church. At first his 
endeavor was to find out a way of so urging the truths 
of Christ's divine nature and mediatorship, the neces- 
sity of a personal relation to Him, both subjective and 
sacramental, and the inspiring power of his cross 
upon character, charities, and missions, as to secure a 
reception of these truths without needless opposition. 
Substantially the same aim and line were followed in 
a service of five years in the chapel of Harvard Col- 
lege as an 'independent,' to which he was invited 
by President Walker and the fellows and overseers, 
partly orthodox and partly 'liberal,' in 1855. 

"In this comparatively tranquil air everything was 
favorable to reading and thought, to a free comparison 
of systems, and an unprejudiced survey of the world 
outside. Certain editorial and other public engage- 
ments continued for some time, at least, a nominal 
relation to the body to which he owed much and to 
which he must always be grateful. It was a relation 
which, in spite of all exertions to the contrary, his own 
misgivings, some protests from his former associates, 
and some sharp attacks from one or two Congrega- 
tional newspapers, rendered irksome and at last in- 
tolerable. However desirable it might be to deliver 
one's convictions to an assembly of young men in a 
leading university, to patient and unremonstrating 



162 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

learned faculty-men and their families, and to others 
with them, he knew there must be a limit to the prose- 
cution of that design. Looking out as intelligently as 
he could, he thought he saw the disbelieving and dis- 
integrating tendencies above-named to be unchecked. 
He asked himself: Is there anywhere in ecclesiastical 
annals an instance of so swift a plunge downwards in 
any association of people bearing the name of Christ, 
simply losing hold of the central fact of revelation ? He 
could no longer be content with a kind of Christianity 
destitute of a Christ in whom is all the fullness and power 
of God, without an inspired charter, without the law 
and inheritance and corporate energy and universal 
offer of the gifts and graces of eternal life in a visible 
church. . . . 

"At no time, though familiar with most forms of 
unbelief, was H. either pressed or allured to any school 
of avowed skepticism. Doubts as to one and another 
article of the faith, he had, and they were sometimes 
obstinate. But neither the course of the world, nor the 
constitution of man, neither the mysteries of revelation 
nor those of Providence, neither what a scientific 
testimony told him of nature, nor what nescience 
suggested as probable, held out to him any plausible 
disproof that God lives, cares for his children, and 
speaks to them." ! 

Cambridge, Nov. 20, 1859. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

If the interest taken by the public just now in my 
behalf awakens any new interest in you and father, I 
trust it will not be an interest of disturbance or pain. 
1 The Forum, June, 1886. 






SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 163 

If father speaks of it, tell him I think we are one in the 
substance of the faith now, and shall see eye to eve 
hereafter. I have just been reading over his printed 
creed, in his book, and do not see that I differ from 
that. We are not in danger of believing too much, nor 
of erring fatally if we cling to Christ, to the Bible, and 
the mercy-seat. My external relations are pleasant 
enough, and most of those about us, though naturallv a 
little moved by the startling public statements, treat us 
quite liberally. 

In a few words of retrospect left among his papers 
Bishop Huntington wrote: "My first discontent was 
with the denial of the divinity and the redemption 
of our Lord, and this was followed by a gradually 
established belief in the Trinity and in the divine or- 
ganization and authority of the church apostolical 
and primitive." 

The acceptance of a full statement of the Orthodox 
belief was slow. On Whitsunday, 1858, Rev. J. I. T. 
Coolidge, pastor of the Purchase Street Unitarian 
Church, had preached a sermon in which, as he pre- 
pared it, he wrote down, almost unconsciously, the words 
"Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity," an expres- 
sion so decisive that at the close of the discourse he 
offered his resignation to the congregation. When he 
communicated this experience to his old friend and 
brother in the ministry, Professor Huntington, in an 
interview the next day, Professor Huntington de- 
clared, •" I cannot say that." But he spoke the words 
with sorrow and deep feeling. 

When at length he wrote the sermon entitled "Life, 
Salvation and Comfort for Man in the Divine Trinity," 



164 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the light had entered his soul. This confession of a 
true faith was prepared for publication in the volume 
"Christian Believing and Living," and appeared in 
December, 1859. A priest of a later generation makes 
this tribute to the writer: "His masterful sermon, 
with the explanatory note thereon, uncovers the work- 
ing of his philosophic faith, and reveals the patient 
deliberation of the investigations, with the irresistible 
cogency of the arguments, that attend his final decision 
for the church doctrine of our Lord's divinity. It is a 
treatise of vast value to the church. It has won and 
may still win many more to the faith. Holy Scripture, 
authors ancient and modern, philosophy, spiritual in- 
tuitions, considerations of practical purport — all are 
here called upon to vindicate the great doctrine and to 
justify the change in the author's theological con- 
victions, from which thereafter he never swerved. His 
heart having been given to this truth, and his intel- 
lect fairly won to its scriptural and philosophic con- 
sistency, he accepted and declared the issue without 
subtlety and without quibbling." * 

In a note upon this sermon at the end of his volume 
Dr. Huntington says : — 

" The course of the author's experience — if such a 
reference may be allowed — prompts a few words 
further on two or three difficulties connected with the 
subject in minds hesitating to receive the form of the 
doctrine, while yet inclined by their reverence to offer to 
the Saviour exalted honors. The whole issue is close 
and brief. Jesus is either the incarnation not of an 
abstraction, a quality, or a principle, but of God. or 
else he is a created being, who began to be in time. 5 i 

1 Memorial Sermon: Rev. W. D. Maxon, D. D. 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 165 

that there was a time when our Lord and Redeemer 
was not. There is a devout class of men who speak 
earnestly of Christ as divine, and who yet acknowledge 
that they date the beginning of his being from the hour 
of his birth as the Son of Mary. 

" Closely analyzed, the idea of incarnation which is 
advanced by some writers, who yet deny that Christ 
is God, seems to signify nothing really distinct in kind 
from what takes place in any living child of human 
birth. We may partially cover the question up with 
sounding words, or try to exalt the subject by dig- 
nified generalities ; but unless there was a Divine 
Personality incarnated, there were only those ab- 
stract notions or ideas which, in some sense or other, 
may be said to be incarnated in every human character. 
More than this is certainly affirmed in the mighty 
sentences of the Gospel. More than this would seem 
to be demanded by hearts that the Gospel has quickened 
and enlarged. In the attempt to maintain a middle 
position there appears to be constant struggle between 
the moral posture of the student and the intellectual, 
between his sentiments toward the Saviour, which are 
essentially adoring, and the abating definitions of his 
formal statements. The right conclusion of that 
struggle is a great joy." 

These sentences are not quoted merely to aid souls 
perplexed and questioning, for to such the complete 
treatment of the subject is commended, but because 
they were a reality to him who wrote them and are 
plainly autobiographical. The joy and peace were his 
in full measure when he found himself again a leader of 
minds, an expositor of living truths, after the cloud 
and darkness he had passed through. The following 



166 FREDERIC DAX HUNTINGTON 

letter to an intimate correspondent expresses what he 
felt. 

Cambridge, Dec. 29, 1859. 

To A. J. 

The decisive publication has been made, in a 
volume of sermons. I want your sympathy in this 
hour of conflict, when so many friends are filled with 
grief and pain, when some are angry, some nobly 
generous, — some surprised — knowing that my convic- 
tions were less understood than I thought, — and 
when it seems quite probable that the outward rela- 
tions of my life may be greatly changed. Be assured 
my peace is all that our Blessed Lord and Saviour 
promised. I was never so at rest, never less anxious, 
never so strong as now. As you have long prayed for 
me, so frame now a Collect of Thanksgiving, and offer 
it gladly in my behalf. And then intercede that I may 
be kept in an humble, meek, patient and gentle spirit, 
after Him, who, in great condescension, "as at this 
time, " came to visit us in the form of a servant. 

Jan. 8, 1860. 

To his Sister. 

Notices of my book are coming in all the time. 
Those on one side are very cordial and approvatory, 
tho' I am glad to say, to the credit of Christians, I 
have seen none that exult in a partisan or proselyting 
spirit. The other party seems to be on the whole, as 
considerate as could be expected. 

Private letters too, are various in spirit and sig- 
nification. Some of them I should like to show you. 
But your quiet view is good. These mysteries are too 
high for us, hence I am more anxious to affirm than 
to deny. 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 167 

In May, 1859, Professor Huntington had sent to 
President Walker a confidential letter, enclosing a 
resignation of his office. Asking forbearance for 
misgivings already expressed to his valued counselor, 
he says: "Occurrences, trains of thought, remarks 
brought to my attention, revive from time to time 
with different degrees of force; tho' they are rarely 
subdued. 

" You will not wonder that I am oppressed with the 
responsibility of acting as the religious teacher of 
these young men, under just these circumstances, 
away from home as they are, having no parents at 
hand to correct what they might deem erroneous, and 
without a large experience. On the other hand, you 
will consider how I am likely to feel about a full and 
explicit declaration of my convictions, so as to be 
faithful to Christ, and my own soul. Besides all this the 
question arises, and pursues, how far a mistrust or 
uncertainty in the minds of my hearers as to my 
theological place, tends to prevent a hearty, profit- 
able reception of any spiritual influence from my 
services. In other respects I do not wish you to 
suppose my life here is otherwise than congenial and 
agreeable." 

President Walker's reply to the confidence and 
trust imposed upon him in this communication was 
one of regret for a separation which he believed would 
be a calamity to the college. In availing himself of 
permission to retain the resignation for a time, he 
begged that it might be a few months, until his suc- 
cessor was appointed, his own retirement being then 
already decided upon. 

During the following months the doubts and un- 



168 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

certainties in Professor Huntington's mind had given 
place to settled conviction, and through the issue of 
"Christian Believing and Living" his creed was de- 
clared before the world. For a short time he found 
himself in the intellectual life of New England "the 
observed of all observers." The removal of any am- 
biguity in his position marked for him a plain course 
as to the duty incumbent upon him to resign the office 
of Preacher to the University. 

Members of the orthodox denominations, in dis- 
cussions through the newspapers and in private argu- 
ment, made haste to maintain that through his selec- 
tion as an "Independent" he might in all candor 
and sincerity preach any doctrines he pleased, urging 
also that the increasing number of students of Evan- 
gelical tendencies at the College Chapel removed his 
obligations to conform to liberal views. 

He himself took a different view. " My election by 
the Corporation and its confirmation, after postpone- 
ments and much public discussion by the Overseers 
(then a State Board) was well understood to be due, to 
my independency of denominational ties, and the fact 
that I refused to be classed as either a Unitarian or a 
Trinitarian." 

Nearly twenty-five years after, a reference in a 
Boston newspaper recalled the incidents of that time. 
" When Dr. Huntington resigned his position in Harvard 
University on account of a radical change in his reli- 
gious views, he rejected with a dignity akin to scorn 
the suggestion that, as he made no pledges when 
elected, there was no reason why he should resign. 
Square dealing in ecclesiastical matters is sometimes 
an ideal virtue, which men are willing to evade, and 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT I(i9 

follow the advice that Portia rejected, 'To do a great 
right, do a little wrong.' Indeed the instances are not 
few, where religionists come far short of the code of 
honor which binds men of the world, in rejecting 
advantages to which they are not fairly entitled." 

There were, however, many who felt that the 
Chaplain would be doing no injury to his sense of 
integrity in retaining a position lofty enough to be 
free from entanglement and sectarian suspicion. Even 
Rev. Manton Eastburn, Bishop of Massachusetts, 
in common with other eminent men, took the ground 
that more good could be done by remaining in the 
field than in leaying it. 

The pressure of the arguments from sincere and 
trusted advisers may be inferred from the following 
letter to the preacher's most intimate and beloved 
friend on the Harvard faculty, Professor Josiah 
Parsons Cooke, head of the Department of Chemistry. 
The confidence reposed in him at this critical time, 
may be understood when one reads the tribute offered 
by Bishop Huntington, at Prof. Cooke's death in 1894, 
to one "distinguished in the world of knowledge and 
by those who are able to appreciate character, equally 
esteemed for that which is greater than knowledge 
and 'passeth understanding.' At any time since I 
came to know him, during nearly forty years, he 
would have instantly surrendered all the satisfactions 
and rewards of learning rather than be untrue in act 
or word to his Divine Master, or swerve from the way 
of Christian integrity. When I had the pulpit and 
pastorate of the College, he used to gather students 
Sunday afternoons for religious instruction and en- 
couragement." 



170 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Jan. 18, 1860. 

To J. P. C. 

Dear Friend: — Some time ago I promised you 
that before actually resigning my office, I would in- 
form you of any intention I might form to do so. Even 
without such a promise I should feel impelled to 
acquaint you with that purpose before acting upon it, 
and now that the time has come I find I shrink far 
more from breaking the matter to you than to any other 
person in this community, so you are the first man to 
whom I break it. Indeed it costs me severer effort to 
write this note than to write my letter to the Corpora- 
tion, and I write rather than speak, only because it is 
less trying to my feelings. There are reasons for this. 
And first of all it is because you have been throughout 
my firmest, promptest, most efficient and self-sacrificing 
friend, and helper, among all my associates here, 
in the sacred work which I have had most at heart. 
You have seen the real meaning and aim of my min- 
istry. You have nobly stood by me in good report and 
in evil report. You have incurred great inconvenience 
and trial on my account, and for the sake of that great 
object which I came here to serve. Often, I have no 
doubt, you have extended your favor to measures and 
expressions which your individual judgment would 
not have chosen, and from loyalty and friendship to me 
and my undertaking, — for Christ's sake above all. 
There is probably no other man here who will regret 
my going with any feeling at all comparable to yours. 
All this, I know. How deeply and sadly I feel it! How 
I have been obliged to struggle under the sense of it! 
God help us both to bear it, with mutual confidence 
unshaken and calm trust in God that all shall be over- 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 171 

ruled for our good, for the good of the College and for 
the Master's honor! 

Believe me, it is the true course which I am taking. 
I know my Christian honor is dear to you. You would 
not have me act, so that one slightest stain of reproach, 
or shade of ambiguity, or least bond of compromise, 
should rest upon me. Trust me, then, so far as to be- 
lieve that the course I am taking is the only one con- 
sistent with your friend's preservation of a perfectly 
fair name. Over and over again I have considered the 
whole subject in all its bearings ; have brought all that 
you have said, or can say, before conscience and my 
Maker. Day by day and night by night I have prayed 
and wrestled in my prayers with the Spirit who has so 
abundantly taught me to trust Him. And now in an- 
swer my w r ay is clear. I must not expect others to see 
it, — certainly not at once. But you will not expect on 
your part that a view of duty so deliberately and 
solemnly adopted, can be easily altered. May we not 
both be spared the trial of a fruitless attempt? 

Circumstances make it imperative that my resig- 
nation should go in to-morrow. I especially beg you 
not to mention it to any person till next week. It is 
probable I shall stay in C. many months, perhaps 
years. I have offered to perform the devotional ex- 
ercises, if desired, next term. 

My dear friend, my path, plain as it is, is not easy. 
Look up for me this night to the Lord of Peace and 
Strength, and should you intercede for the University, 
remember me, and my need of help from on high. 
God care for us, and bless us! 

Affectionately, gratefully, and forever yours, 

F. D. H. 



172 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

On January. 19, Professor Huntington presented to 
the Corporation of Harvard College a request to be 
discharged from the post of service to which he had 
been called five years before, prefacing this with the 
statement that he had alreadv twice offered his resig- 
nation to the President, "leaving it to his judgment 
either to convey this communication to your Board 
or to withhold it. The reason assigned to my proposal 
to retire, was the growth and extent of my difference in 
religious opinion and religious faith from a majority 
of those addressed by my preaching. 

"Aware that not a few, good men, in both the 
parties referred to (Orthodox and liberal) consider it 
best that the office should not be vacated, I have re- 
considered more than once very anxiously and with a 
deep desire to be taught the truth. It is urged that the 
attendance on the Chapel services, from the several 
departments of the University, indicates no necessity 
for such a step. But it will be argued on the one hand 
that no public policy can be sound which involves the 
least compromise of personal simplicity of character. 
Those minds that do not attach great importance to 
distinctions in belief will appreciate the rule of honor. 
On the other hand I venture to hope that the same 
confidence which might lead some persons to wish me 
to remain, will prompt the charitable suggestion that 
my action is determined by considerations of which 
the full strength cannot be felt elsewhere than on the 
spot. There is no reason why I should not go further 
and express with respectful deference, and in the way 
of a report of my observation, a question whether 
inherent difficulties, insuperable at least for the 
present, do not stand in the way of a satisfactory 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 173 

separate religious ministration in an institution such 
as this in the present crisis." 

The writer, after a further review of the situation, 
makes a suggestion that it might be well for the stu- 
dents to be distributed for Sunday worship among the 
parishes of Cambridge, according to their own reli- 
gious preferences or training, a policy since established 
in the college. In closing, with acknowledgments 
for abundant kindness to the students, to his asso- 
ciates and especially to those "older than myself or 
intimately connected with the University for a longer 
time, who have so simply and considerately consented 
to the means I have proposed for the Christian wel- 
fare of the young men, and who have rendered my 
residence among them delightful," the writer offered, 
if desired, to conduct the week-day devotional ser- 
vices in the Chapel for the remainder of the aca- 
demic year. This was accepted, but his last sermon 
in Appleton Chapel, without formal leave-taking, had 
already been delivered on the preceding Sunday, Jan. 
15, 1860. 

He was called to the pastorate of the church in 
Harvard University at a meeting of the members, 
June 19, 1855, as conveyed by a document signed by 
James Walker, Convers Francis, C. C. Felton. The 
letter resigning this office was written June 30, 1860, 
at the end of the college term. It is pleasant to insert 
here a letter from one of these church officers, always 
a valued friend of its pastor. 

Washington, Jan. 29, 1860. 
My dear Mr. Huntington: — I have been filled 
with regret, at the news I have received, within a day 



174 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

or two. I know that you have been led by the most 
conscientious motives, to resign your place in the 
University. I have not time now to enter into any ex- 
tended argument to induce you to recall your resig- 
nation; but I earnestly hope the Committee of the 
Overseers and the Corporation will be able to con- 
vince you that you may, consistently with your sense 
of Christian obligations, continue with us as our 
honored and beloved religious teacher and guide. It 
is my personal and most decided wish; and I cannot 
doubt that it is the wish of the University. I shall 
lament the contrary decision, if you should finally 
settle upon it, not only as a calamity to the college, but 
as a great misfortune to myself and my family. I need 
not remind you that you were appointed without the 
slightest reference to special opinions or controverted 
questions; so far as any change of views on your part 
may be supposed to have affected your action, I cannot 
doubt, from what I hear and know of public senti- 
ment, that you may, with entire good faith, dismiss 
that consideration from the elements of final decision. 
That your labors have been effective, useful and im- 
portant to the moral and religious condition of the 
College, I know : but I know also, better than you can 
know, how difficult it is to work a visible change in so 
peculiar a society as that of a college. You have al- 
ready made a visible change: and your further con- 
tinuance in the office is essential to make that change 
for the better, not only permanent but progressive. 
The same papers that announced your resignation, 
announce my election by the Corporation to the 
Presidency. I was not ignorant of the fact that my 
name was mentioned in conversation and by the press, 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 175 

with others, for this most responsible position; but I 
had no intimation from any member of the Corpora- 
tion or of any other body, that I was seriously thought 
of. Should the Overseers concur, I shall probably 
accept the office, with many misgivings and serious 
questionings, whether it will be for the good of the 
College, or my own happiness. And I should regard 
your retirement at such a moment as a very unfortu- 
nate circumstance. 

With kind regards to Mrs. Huntington, 
Ever cordially yours, 

C. C. Felton. 

A gratifying tribute came from three professors of 
the Law Department. "We believe that the University 
has been made better by your labors. It will be fortu- 
nate for her future history if the moral and religious 
influence which the example and instructions of the 
incumbent of the place you have occupied shall exert 
upon her pupils, shall be guided and animated by as 
devoted a purpose, as untiring a zeal, and as sincere, 
wise and well-directed regard for the best welfare of 
others as hare characterized your administration of 
its duties." This was subscribed, with other expressions 
of commendation and affection: Joel Parker, The- 
ophilus Parsons, Emory Washburn. It could not be 
expected that there would be unanimity of feeling 
among those who had sat under Professor Huntington's 
preaching, in the seats of the faculty, during the five 
years w T hich wrought such changes in his own mind. 
Among some of those sincerely attached to the Uni- 
tarian denomination there was dissatisfaction, not 
only with the doctrine to which they listened but to the 



176 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

new features introduced into the worship. Such 
differences were not bitter, nor loudly expressed, but 
their existence helped to soften the sundering of a tie, 
between minister and people, which had been that of a 
regular parish, and in many cases become an affec- 
tionate and personal relation. There were other regrets 
in breaking from the close associations of the past, 
and it seems not inappropriate to copy here a few 
words written from the retrospect of age. 

" Of course no experience in my life can have been 
more important to my own mind than my separation 
from the Unitarian denomination in whicli I was born 
and brought up, and my acceptance of the Catholic 
faith of the Historical Church. What has led me 
into these reminiscences is a certain solicitude, of 
which I am often conscious, lest my change of re- 
ligious faith and position should be supposed to cast 
discredit on my early training in my family and in 
the Unitarian body, or to imply that I fail to appre- 
ciate and acknowledge the actual and generous ad- 
vantages which in some respects I am sure I derived 
from my education and association on the side of the 
liberal culture, the thought and life of New England 
during the second quarter of the century, — or say 
from 1820 to 1860. For these, with all the errors, one- 
sidedness and losses, I can truly say, I am thankful 
to the Providence of God. I am not quite patient 
at the idea that I have renounced either a love of in- 
dependence and freedom or a grateful sense of those 
favors and honors which the liberal party of those 
days lavished upon me, to its utmost bounty, and be- 
yond all my deserving; that I have passed from the 
sphere of sympathy with toleration, progress, and char- 






SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 177 

ity to a region of exclusiveness, bigotry, or mere ven- 
eration for the past. 

" Surely the wrench itself, and all that went with it, 
a re-beginning of all one's professional, and much of 
one's social career, and its scenery, with all that I have 
preached and published since, both positive and nega- 
tive, ought to suffice for proof of the reality, thorough- 
ness and comprehensiveness of the convictions which 
commanded it." 

Appropriate to such reflections is the following, a 
copy of which was preserved with other correspondence 
and inscribed, "a specimen of many written at this 
time." 

Nov. 30, 1859. 
To C. S. K. 

My dear Friend : — It cannot be otherwise than 
gratifying to me that you keep a remembrance of my 
ministry, and an interest in my belief fresh and strong 
enough to prompt you to write me at this time. As 
you suggest, my correspondence is very large, espe- 
cially at the present moment. Letters come in, in such 
quantity, with inquiries, congratulations, and regrets 
that I lay aside, for the most part, my ordinary occu- 
pations to answer them, and certainly yours, — the 
letter of an old and faithful friend, — shall not be 
neglected. Indeed how can I find any happier and 
better employment than in commending to others 
what I find so clear, — so strengthening, and so com- 
forting to myself ? 

The preaching of my deliberate and deepest con- 
victions is the business of my life. For now I feel an 
assurance I never felt before, I feel certainty, now, 
of standing on "the foundation of the Apostles and 



178 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cor- 
ner-stone." Now I can join in without hesitation, or 
reserve, with the great multitudes of the Christian 
ages, and of all Christian lands, in the grand and 
glowing ascription, " Glory be to the Father, and to the 
Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the begin- 
ning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, 
Amen." 

How unnatural it would be if I did not wish to im- 
part this joy, and confidence, and peace, and conso- 
lation, which I am sure God has given me by the Cross 
of my Lord, — to all whom I love, — and it seems to 
me that I never loved so many, nor so much before. 

You will not expect me in these narrow limits to give 
you the reasons by which my mind has been led to its 
present conclusions. Suffice it to say, the process has 
been steady, slow and always in one direction. In 
spite of all the external and friendly inducements to 
remain where I had a large hearing, position, honors, 
sympathies, enough to fill the human desires of any 
reasonable man, my mind has been lifted up and borne 
irresistibly along to another faith. 

Do not suppose, because you have associated this 
other faith with dogmatism and bigotry, that I am 
going to be a dogmatist or a bigot. I don't believe I 
am. The truth is, those are faults of human nature, 
rather than of religious systems. I find them too pre- 
valent everywhere; certainly they are too rife and 
bitter among Unitarians. There are most truly liberal 
and noble and generous Christians in all sects. But 
we want more of them; and I hope to see them mul- 
tiplied. Certainly there is nothing inconsistent with 
such a spirit in an Evangelical theology. You refer 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 179 

to my past instructions very kindly. My dear friend, 
if you were willing to listen to me, and inquire with 
me then, listen to me and inquire with me all the more, 
now. What was positive and affirmatory in my preach- 
ing was true. What was negative and unscriptural, 
I hope may be forgiven. Pray come on, with me, to 
these still better and firmer views. These are two 
good texts for you: " Hold that fast which thou hast," 
and "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief." En- 
treat the Holy One to enlighten you; to give you a 
fair, candid, unprejudiced spirit of investigation; to 
open your whole understanding and heart to the truth. 
And he will "lead you into all truth." 

You refer to a sermon I once preached, giving seven 
reasons for disbelieving the Trinity. I remember it 
perfectly, tho' it is a long time since I have seen 
the manuscript, and I am not likely to look it up. It 
was written in good faith, — but not half so good a 
faith as the Master has been pleased to give me since. 
And I hope you will credit it, when I tell you that, as 
I look back upon the real state of my mind, when the 
discourse was delivered, it seems to me very plain that, 
after all, I was not satisfied, but only trying to be so ; 
that I was defending what human lips had taught me 
rather than the Infinite One who is the Light of the 
world. 

You speak — and I thank God you can — of 
your faith in "the divine Sonship of our blessed 
Saviour, Jesus Christ." Now, if you carefully exam- 
ae the real meaning of that language, will you not 
find it impossible to stop short of the absolute and 
perfect oneness of nature between the Son and the 
Father ? 



180 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






A clear and full statement of the reasons for his 
change of belief was given by Professor Huntington 
to his friend and former family pastor, Rev. Dr. Hall, 
one of the oldest and most honored of the Unitarian 
ministry, who had sent a letter of kindly remon- 
strance, which was met by a reply, written in a spirit 
of sacred confidence. The extract which is given man- 
ifests, in a touching manner, the depth and permanence 
of that mother's influence which was the mainspring 
of her son's life. 

Dec. 15, 1859. 

To E. B. H. 

You speak of my mother. I think I shall always 
love all that loved her. Her impression on you does 
not surprise me, for her piety, in depth, consistency, 
vigor, fervor and practical force surpassed any piety 
I have ever known. It was too high, pure, heavenly 
to be associated without profanity with any secta- 
rian name or persuasion. But in fact that piety was 
produced, nurtured, and matured under the influ- 
ences and within the Fold of the Trinitarian Church. 
There for seventeen years it grew and bore expressions 
and fruits as abounding as it ever yielded, before the 
pressure of an ultra-Calvinistic discipline and intol- 
erant personal exclusiveness drove her from the home 
of her heart, and even modified her statement of 
opinion, though never reverence for her Divine Saviour. 
All the secrets of that intellectual and inward process 
are known only to the Searcher of hearts. But next 
to Heaven, a holy confidence and cherished records 
admitted me to a deep acquaintance with all her per- 
plexed way. She never wished to leave the Trinita- 



SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 181 

rian communion. She never parted with the substance 
of her early faith. No power, under the Holy Spirit, 
was so efficient in bringing me where I now am, as 
the past communications — if I may not say the im- 
mediate action — of her love, and I suppose we were 
never so much at one as we are in these happy 
hours* 



CHAPTER VI 

DIVINE GUIDANCE 

" Now Christian was mnch affected with his deliverance from all the 
dangers of his solitary ways. And about this time the sun was rising 
and this was another mercy. Then said he: 

" 'His candle shineth on my head and by his light I go through 
darkness.' " 

Almost at the end of his pilgrimage Frederic Hunt- 
ington wrote: "It has been all these forty years and 
more, a chief joy and satisfaction of my life to show 
to others the wondrous way in which the God of Truth 
and Peace has led me to his Household and made it 
my home. I was brought up and was a minister among 
those who deny the truth of the Trinity. My heart's 
desire for all such is that they may be saved." This 
was the motive of his preaching, and it was in a like 
spirit of consecration that he gave his writings to the 
world. The fruits of his early pastoral work, of his 
religious experience and deliberate change of con- 
victions are all summed up in the two volumes of ser- 
mons published in 1855 and 1859. Through these 
his reputation was established, and his name became 
widely known, not only in his own country, but across 
the sea. In 1860, quite unknown to the author, an 
edition of "Christian Believing and Living" was 
published in Edinburgh and London : the discourses 
printed without the Scripture texts, and with no pre- 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 183 

face or explanation to indicate that the writer was an 
American. 

The interest awakened in his readers may be seen 
in letters to Dr. Huntington, given in the present 
chapter. The following clear and discriminating es- 
timate is from the Rev. J. G. Butler. 

"No English writer, not excepting the justly de- 
served favorites, Robertson and Bushnell, has, in 
equal space, compacted so much living and valuable 
thought in language so clear, vigorous, terse and 
elegant as will be found in the two volumes, ' Christian 
Believing and Living' and 'Sermons for the People.' 
The range of topics includes a connected and prac- 
tically full statement of the essential doctrines, and a 
similar exposition of actual Christian experience. 
Without employing the technical terms of theology 
and philosophy, yet using no feebler equivalents, he 
deals with every form of speculative and experimental 
question from the standpoint of scriptural truth. 
The underlying philosophy of the Christian system 
is discriminately applied to particular points of belief 
and to differing phases of spiritual life, as well as to 
advanced issues raised by modern infidelity, and to 
current social problems. As suggestive studies upon 
all these leading themes of the pulpit, emphatically 
upon the relation and bearing of a genuine health- 
ful Christianity upon the customs and institutions of 
society, these volumes are eminently full, intelligible 
and satisfactory in both reasonings and conclusions. 

" The writer's method, too, of putting thought, and 
his style in giving it expression strongly attract a 
thoughtful and discriminating reader. Uniting keen 
philosophical insight with great analytic and logical 



184 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

power, naturally broad perceptions and balanced 
judgment, with the largest, most refined culture, in- 
cluding not only the careful study of books, but also 
of men in their natures, their business and social 
habits, and their varied experiences — there is a vi- 
tality, a directness, force and progress in his thinking 
that compel attention and awaken a corresponding 
enthusiasm. 

" As a crowning charm of these books, on every page 
we discern a hearty scorn of shams and a righteous 
severity against counterfeits and pretenses, alike in 
religious professions and every-day life, a thorough 
love for realness and loyalty to truth; a genuine 
reverence for things, human as well as divine, that are 
to be revered; and an intense purpose to honor God, 
and to be helpful to man. As helps to devotion, there- 
fore, as supplying, through the invigorating play of 
quickening thought, continual incentive to healthful, 
spiritual feeling, these admirable volumes deserve 
the highest commendation to Christian students and 
thoughtful believers of every name." * 

For a short time after his resignation at Harvard, 
discussion and conjecture were rife over Dr. Hunt- 
ington's future course. When it became known that 
the board of overseers had asked the chaplain to re- 
consider his resignation, letters poured in urging him 
to remain at the University. From the same sources 
where the appointment of a liberal to the post of 
college preacher had been deplored five years before, 
came now urgent remonstrance against his leaving. 

1 Rev. Charles Macauley Stuart says of Christian Believing and 
Luring that it is " to my mind the choicest devotional classic this 
country has produced." 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 185 

In an editorial obituary notice in a Boston news- 
paper it was said of Bishop Huntington's early ex- 
perience: "At one time a popular preacher in the 
city of Boston, in a Unitarian pulpit, then a pro- 
fessor of ethics and religion at Harvard University, he 
in due time ceased to be a Unitarian, and for lack 
of welcome by Trinitarian Congregationalists, and 
because of the suspicion and frigidity of the Con- 
gregational leaders of that day, entered the Pro- 
testant Episcopal church, in which he was to rise 
ultimately to the place of Bishop and be one of the 
earliest and most ardent advocates of that form of 
Christian activity which is calculated to retain in al- 
legiance to the church the wage-earners and artisans." 
As a matter of history, the statement quoted, with 
regard to the attitude of the prominent men in the 
Orthodox Congregational body, is without foundation. 
The following communications taken from the corre- 
spondence of that time are sufficient evidence that no 
mark of good-will was wanting. In the weeks after 
tendering his resignation Dr. Huntington preached 
on Sundays in the Pine Street and Bowdoin Street 
churches ; the Old South ; for Rev. Dr. Albro in 
Cambridge ; and occupied the pulpit of the Shawmut 
Church for several weeks, all Orthodox Congregational 
parishes. 

From Rev. Edward N. Kirk, D.D., pastor of the 
Mount Vernon church. 

Boston, Dec. 1, 1859. 
Dr. Huntington. 

My dear Brother : — I am charged by a committee 
of gentlemen from a very important church, if we may 



186 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

thus speak of any one in particular, to confer with 
you in regard to their desire to secure your services 
as their minister and teacher. 

You of course anticipate every point of that confer- 
ence on my side. But the preliminary one is, are you 
willing to confer on the subject ? The inquiries I 
would propose are these. Are your views for probable 
greatest usefulness such as to preclude the considera- 
tion of becoming pastor of a church in Boston ? Are 
your views of the Unitarian church such as to induce 
you ecclesiastically to separate yourself from them ? 

You will not I trust consider me intrusive in re- 
viving the last point when we had closed a discussion 
of it. Then I was endeavoring to ascertain my own 
duty. Now I am acting for a large body of Christ's 
disciples; and you will appreciate my motives. You 
may imagine that the time will seem long to these 
brethren until I shall be able to report to them. 

Shall I call on you, or will you determine your course 
without an interview ? 

Most affectionately, 

Your brother in Christ, 

Edw. N. Kirk. 

From Rev. Nehemiah Adams, pastor of Essex Street 

Congregational Church. 

Boston, Jan. 18, 1860. 

Rev. Professor Huxtixgton, D. D. 

My dear Sir: — It has been my desire for some time 
to see you and express the high gratification derived 
from reading your Sermons, in the volume just pub- 
lished, which has awakened so much interest among 
all who have perused it. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 187 

I was pleased with the sensible and judicious 
manner in which you placed the disclosure of your 
views subordinately in your volume, without osten- 
tation. 

I never have seen the subject treated more fully, 
more satisfactorily, or from better points of view. The 
whole development and your entire position are deeply 
interesting to the whole Evangelical community. 

While my respect for you would lead me to refrain 
from anything which would seem to look like endorse- 
ment, still there are duties of fellowship and private 
signs of interest and of desire to be one with you, for 
the truth's sake, which lead me to say that, if for any 
reason you can see your way clear to preach for me 
during the day or in the evening of any Sabbath it 
will be very gratifying to me; and if next Sabbath 
will be convenient to you for this purpose, my pulpit 
is open to you. I desire to do that which will pro- 
mote your public usefulness; for you have, I trust, 
a good work before you. Be so good, therefore, as to 
make use of me in the way intimated for that pur- 
pose. If you can, will you preach at Essex Street 
church next Sabbath, the 22, morning, afternoon or 
evening ? 

Most truly yours, 

N. Adams. 

From the Rev. Ray Palmer, author of the hymn, 
"My Faith looks up to Thee." 

Albany, Jan 22, 1860. 
My dear Brother : — I wrote you simply be- 
cause I felt I must express the deep interest in you and 



188 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the warm sympathy with what God has been mani- 
festly doing for you and by you for a long time. It 
seemed impossible but that the trials of your position 
must have been many, and it appeared to me to be a 
duty impressed on those whose hearts were with you 
to say so, for your encouragement and comfort. . . . 

This has struck me in reading your discourses, and 
it gives them a special charm, that you seem all the 
while to be evolving a theology from experience, 
rather than aiming to reach an experience by theology, 
i. e. as reasoned out by the logical intellect. As in- 
wardly guided, you explore the field of religious truth, 
and at once recognize and verify the Christian doc- 
trines, by a divine light and spiritual appreciation. 
When the Holy Spirit in the soul " takes the things of 
Christ and shows them " to the attentive and waiting 
understanding, with what a self-w r itnessing power 
they come! . . . 

I thank you for what you say so kindly of the hymn. 
It is always grateful to me to hear that it aids the 
worship of Christ's people. The truth which it em- 
bodies will sufficiently explain the fact that it has 
found a place in the hearts of living and dying 
saints. 

I hope to be in Massachusetts in February and will 
certainly come to see you, and if you have an hour to 
spare we will talk as fast as we can. 

Believe me fraternally and affectionately yours, 

Ray Palmer. 

From Rev. S. P. Thompson, D. D., paster of the 
Broadway Tabernacle, Congregational, New York 
City. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 189 

New York, Jan. 29, 1860. 

My dear Brother: — It is lawful to do good on 
the Sabbath day ; and especially lawful to care for some 
great interest of the Master's kingdom. Last night, 
after reading of your resignation at Cambridge, I re- 
solved to write you not to be in haste to commit your- 
self to new arguments, and especially not to throw 
away your individuality and your power for personal 
movement by entering into any of the closer sects; 
and I retired thinking and wondering what should 
the Professor do ? To-day it has been revealed to me 
what you shall do; and "being in the spirit, on the 
Lord's Day," and having heard the voice, I make 
haste to deliver the message. 

For three years past there have been sporadic 
movements toward a new Congregational church 
in New York. These movements would have crys- 
tallized around our beloved brother Storrs, but for 
the hard times, and his earnestness for a liturgy. It 
was thought best to avoid novelties and to start purely 
congregational. The elements for such an organiza- 
tion remain numerous and strong. The field is ample. 
I am most earnest for the thing. 

Well, to-day, Mr. L., formerly of Boston, came to 
me to say that an effort must be made to get you here. 
Amen ! said I; and I write at once to say that by way 
of introducing you to parties here, I will exchange 
with you at Shawmut, any Sabbath after the next, or 
w T ill welcome you to my pulpit for the whole of any 
Sabbath which you will name. 

There will be money, enterprise, strength, faith, 
working-power, everything in short that you could de- 
sire, in getting up a church, and such a field as you 



190 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

would have ! and such welcome as I should give you ! 
and such joy as I would have in you ! 

Write when you will come. 

Ever truly yours, 

Jas. P. Thompson. 

Confer not with flesh and blood ! Obey the heavenly 
vision. 

St. Anthony, Feb. 6, 1860. 

My dear Friend and Brother : — I see by a 
paper which has just come to hand, that you have been 
constrained to resign your place. I greatly regret that 
necessity which has compelled you, and sympathize 
deeply in the trial through which you are passing. 

I have not seen your last book, which I suppose may 
have had something to do with the issue to which you 
have come. But I was prepared to see that a bold and 
outspoken declaration would cost you a hard struggle. 
"Liberal Christianity" is not, after all, the gentlest, 
broadest thing in the world. This you had learned 
before, and so far, probably, are not disappointed. 

Still the burden you carry must be heavy, and I hope 
you will have grace to bear it in such a way as will 
strengthen you. In some respects I almost envy you, — 
for it is really good and blessed, as I can testify, to 
be under any pressure that presses toward God. 
About the richest months of enjoyment I have ever had 
were those in which I was most pitied and consoled 
with by my friends. They wrote me about the " suffer- 
ing" and "pain" and "loss," and such like forms of 
misery — really I did not know where it was. Under 
the shadow of the Almighty such things do not come. 

Yours truly, 

Horace Bushnell. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 191 

Professor Park, of the Theological School at An- 
dover, wrote on the date of Februry 4, 1860: — 

"I presume that you will recall your resignation of 
the Plummer Professorship. Will it be too much to 
ask that if you have decided not to recall it, you will 
have the goodness to inform me ? I feel very desirous 
of having a conversation with you on one project, in 
the case of your deciding to leave Harvard" 

From Professor Park. 

Andover, Feb. 13, 1860. 

I have just received your kind letter 

It would be only an affectation for me to deny, that 
I am disappointed. When I wrote you, I firmly ex- 
pected that you would either remain independent 
of all denominations in your present office, or else 
would be willing to take a position among the Con- 
gregationalists, where I supposed that you would ac- 
complish more than you could accomplish anywhere 
else, for the cause which you love. I heard last Satur- 
day that you had decided on a different course, and 
this morning I find the rumor confirmed by your letter, 
which is very frank. 

It would be simply foolish for me to deny that I am 
grieved, as you supposed that I would be. 

Still, I shall always entertain for you a very high 
respect, and I shall always cherish for you a warm 
affection; and although I disapprove of your course, 
I do not doubt but that you are as honest and candid 
in taking as I am in disliking it. Allow me to say, that 
you make on my mind the impression, that you are an 
exceedingly honest and honorable thinker; and I 



192 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

shall never cease to feel a high regard for your thoughts, 
even when I do not coincide with them. 

As the " Biblia Sacra " is not a denominational work 
it will very gladly receive your contributions, from 
whatever denomination you may send them. Let 
me indulge the hope that you will write for the peri- 
odical whenever you can. I can easily imagine that 
you are overwhelmed with letters. Do not take the 
trouble to answer this. 

Very affectionately, 

I am, dear sir, your friend, 

Edward A. Park. 

From President Mark Hopkins. 

Williams College, Feb. 9, 1860. 
Rev. Dr. Huntington. 

My dear Sir: — How much pleasanter life would 
seem if no questions of doubtful propriety or duty 
would come up. You asked me to preach for you. I 
doubted and declined. I must still think, rightly. 
Now I am asked to write you. I doubt and comply, 
and so if you think me wrong you will please re- 
member, so great is my doubt, that we do not differ 
much in opinion. I am so wholly ignorant of your 
Views, and of those more intimate circumstances 
which will be controlling, that anything I may say 
will be liable to be irrelevant if not impertinent. 

The request comes from some of the Shawimit 
people, who think you might do a great work for 
Christ in that part of the city, and who would be 
willing to do anything in their power if they could 
have you for a pastor and work with you. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 193 

I am free to say that my preference would be to 
have you remain where you have been, and I am not 
without hope that such an arrangement may yet 
be made. If not, then I sympathize with the Shaw- 
mut people, and think you would find among them 
a wide and welcoming and worthy field. This is on 
the supposition that in changing your doctrinal be- 
lief you have not, like the most, w T hether clergy or 
laity, who have passed from Unitarianism to Ortho- 
doxy, also passed from Congregationalism to Epis- 
copacy, and that you will not do that. The general 
act I think I can account for, and on grounds some 
of which I think would be strongly against your do- 
ing the same. 

But however that may be, I am sure I can say in 
all sincerity, that my simple wish is to see you where 
you can do the most for the cause of our Divine Re- 
deemer, without reference to names or forms. If 
you think you find Episcopacy in the Bible I have 
not a word to say. Nor should I have to the most 
of those who go to that from taste, or personal pre- 
ference, though I should regard it as a matter of 
principle. They may be better off there, and just as 
useful. But with a right doctrinal system, and a free- 
dom that would put you in sympathy with the masses, 
you have the power, beyond most men, while you will 
please the cultivated and refined, to reach and stir 
those masses. That is w T hat is needed, and that is 
what I wish to see you in the best position to do. I 
should be glad to see realized again, as it would almost 
seem as if we might, Cowper's description of White- 
field. For the end just mentioned I should be glad to 
see you with the simple dignity of a pastor and 



194 FREDERIC DAN HTXTIXGTOX 

preacher, reiving on the power of the Spirit, having 
as you would have, the prayers and cooperation of 
your church, and the affection and confidence of your 
brethren, with no authority above you but that of 
the Master. So it was with our Puritan Fathers, and 
so. as I believe., with the pastors and preachers, of the 
primitive church. So I should hope to see the sling 
and the stone again doing their work. 

That you will excuse this liberty I have taken. I 
feel confident, and beg to assure you. however you 
may decide these comparatively minor questions, of 
the deep sympathy and fullest confidence of 
Yours in the common redemption. 

Mark Hopkins. 

Cambridge, Jan. -27. 18 
To C. J. B. 

Dear Friend: — We will wait a little and see. The 
Master will show the way. It is not perfectly clear. 
Having waited on Him very deliberately, at even- 
step so far. I must not anticipate His direction now. 
Only the independence must not be individualism, 
nor yet religious democracy. The independence must 
be in the souls of preacher and people, — but never 
mere isolation, nor living out-of-doors, — nor forget- 
ting histoiy, nor denying the Past and God's great 
Providence in His Church. We must take care and 
build on the Rock this time. 

I believe in order. — in a Church Body and Form. 
Were I to sit down with you and the friends you 
speak of. I think I could satisfy some of you that the 
noblest and best way to bring the Gospel t«» the people 
— high and low. pool and rich, alike — would be to 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 195 

offer them the service of the Catholic Apostolic Church 
— with her strength and stability, her beautiful 
" Christian Year," her wonderful variety and impressive 
adaptations, her fixed order, true liberty, and free con- 
ditions of Communion, her gracious ordinances, 
constant appeal to Scripture, and tasteful worship, 
her superior culture of the spirit of reverence — the 
inmost spirit of religion — the constant celebration 
of Christ, the living Head of the Body, and His cross, 
her true theory of the training up of the young in rela- 
tions with the Church, and looking to Confirmation 
as their own act, and her large, active, zealous spirit 
of Missions reaching out among the ignorant and 
poor. But I have no time to enumerate, and less to 
explain and enforce her claims. 

I came home from the old farm this morning at 
one o'clock and found twenty-five letters on my desk, 
besides other business. 

Yours ever, 

F. D. H. 

From his own pen we transcribe Dr. Huntington's 
reasons for entering the Episcopal Church. 

"The question remaining was where H. should go. 
. . . Domestic traditions would be apt to point out to 
him a path toward the popular Orthodoxy. In his 
father's library most of the theological department was 
supplied by Puritan divines. Having seen that scheme 
in its actual operation in the kindred varieties of Pres- 
byterian and Congregational organization, together 
with its scientific exposition by men of strong dialec- 
tic power, he was not thereby convinced or fed. An 
opening was made for him in Boston where an 



196 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






independent society might adopt a liturgy. He could 
see no root or affiliation, no brotherhood or sister- 
hood or fellowship for such a product, and respect- 
fully shrank from such an undertaking. If asked 
why he should not join such respectable and active 
bodies as the Baptists, or Methodists, or Sweden- 
borgians, he could only answer by asking why he 
should. Toward the Roman Catholic Church, apart 
from its heritage in common with all the faith- 
ful in all ages and countries, a Divine Christ, the 
Apostles' Creed, an inspired Bible, and a spirit of 
reverence for the supernatural, he found no con- 
straining attraction. Could its three salient chal- 
lenges have been sustained, the exceptional attention 
he gave to them might have resulted in a surrender. 
Moehler's 'Symbolism' and Maurice's 'Kingdom of 
Christ' were laid in his way together at the outset 
of his theological education. One by one the three 
papal challenges broke down. The argument of a final 
authority overruling and extinguishing private judg- 
ment was met by the ready reply : ' If I take you at 
your word, I shall negative your position by employ- 
ing in my acceptance of it the very faculty and right 
which you deny that I possess.' The pretension to 
catholicity and unity fell to pieces at the exposure of 
the included heresies, shielded abominations, schisms, 
intolerance, and papal inconsistencies in the Roman 
obedience. The pretension to apostolicity, as to the 
differentials, gave way completely under the weight 
of more than three hundred years of intervening 
church-life and conciliar decree between the last of 
the Apostles and anything that could fairly be called 
a papacy. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 197 

" Judging no man and no system, knowing well, 
and praying for grace to remember, that to one Master 
only each must stand or fall, H. believed that a church 
to which he could whole-heartedly and gladly yield 
both allegiance and service must wear upon its outer 
and inner constitution certain marks of truth. Its 
creed or symbol of faith must satisfy the require- 
ments of the three agreeing tests — God in Holy 
Scripture ; God in one kingdom, set up as He declared 
by Jesus Christ; having laws; a covenant, a door 
of entrance, a history, and a continuous common life; 
and God in the testimony of His Spirit, in the spirit 
and mind of man made in His image. Bound by this 
threefold cord and upheld by this threefold support, 
a church promised to afford him room, light, safety. 
Its entire visible economy, in sacraments, orders, and 
discipline, must be a direct outgrowth of the Word 
made flesh, or the Incarnation, not a rule imposed, 
but a divine development. Its worship must be lit- 
urgical, the utterance of the brotherhood after Scrip- 
tural models; its conditions of communion must be 
large enough to make admission possible for uni- 
versal humanity, men of every nationality, tempera- 
ment and foregoing conditions. It must habitually 
publish the moral law and illustrate it. It must 
protect wedlock and the household by religious sanc- 
tions and by stringent regulations as respects mar- 
riage and divorce. It must invariably recognize as 
divine and primal appointments the state and the 
family, along with the church, and, in times of lawless- 
ness or disorder join its spiritual force with that of 
the government, and all the more if government is 
free. Its prescribed offices must be absolutely im- 






198 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



partial and uniform as respects all social and class 
distinctions, from the highest to the lowest. It must 
treat character as a growth carried forward by a 
disciplined will, under regenerating and superhuman 
helps, not as the happy issue of an ecclesiastical charm 
or as a mere supplement to an emotional ' experience * 
and must therefore make the training of character the 
prime element in education. In such a church H. 
sought out and thinks he found a home." ' 

The following letter was written to an old friend 
who had long been a communicant in the church. 

Cambridge, Feb. 25, 1860. 
To A. J. 

It should be from me, and not from any other that 
you learn that, this week, on the Eve of Ash Wednes- 
day, I sent in to the Standing Committee of the 
Diocese my papers making application to be con- 
sidered a Candidate for Orders. 

Praise to Father, Son and Holy Ghost! I do not 
now regret that the process has been so slow, and so 
painful. It only emphasizes the joy of deliverance, 
and gives greater assurance. My study of the origin, 
history, constitution, and practical economy of the 
Sacred Body of Christ has been protracted enough 
to give me confidence; and my enthusiasm and loyalty 
of attachment will match yours. " The King's Daugh- 
ter " already appears to me " all glorious within " as 
without. Thro' all this " strife of tongues " the Lord 
has remembered his promise, and kept me safe and 
warm in His pavilion. Sometimes averted and altered 
faces have been colder than the frosty skies ; but there 

1 The Forum, June, 1886. 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 199 

has been Spring within, and almost every mail has 
brought me strong and tender assurances of fellow- 
ship and blessing from the wise and good all over the 
land, — not a few from the Bishops and Clergy of 
our Church. Of course the Orthodox Congregation- 
alists will be disappointed in me. But many of them 
are very generous, feeling the Evangelical faith to be 
greater than the Ecclesiastical difference. 

Of course I have six months release from preach- 
ing, — a sound and wise provision, and one that I 
need for calmer thought and rest and study. 

Preaching never looked so attractive as now, and 
Church work altogether, for I never had so much to 
preach. 

In 1902 Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Clark, then Bishop 
of Rhode Island, wrote to Bishop Huntington in a 
letter on some other subject : — 

" I remember a day when you were settled in Boston 
as a Unitarian minister, I went around with Dr. Vin- 
ton to hear you preach, and on the way home he said 
to me, 'I wish that you and I could preach as that 
man does.' I remember another morning, when I 
was living on Asylum Street, that you called upon 
me and said that you wished to talk with me a lit- 
tle while about something in the Episcopal Church 
which interested you, 'especially,' you added, 'in re- 
gard to the rite of confirmation,' and after you had 
left, I said to myself, ' I think that that man will bring 
up in the Episcopal Church before he dies.' All this 
occurred fifty or sixty years ago and little did I dream 
then of the present event." 

The rector of Grace Church, Boston, was not 



200 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

alone among the clergy who had remarked the in- 
clination growing in Dr. Huntington's mind towards 
their own Communion. But it was a matter of signifi- 
cance to himself that not one of them advanced ar- 
gument or persuasion to induce him to enter the 
ministry. He was wont to say afterwards that nothing 
could have impressed upon him more deeply the his- 
toric claims of Episcopacy than the fact that its fol- 
lowers were content to leave an intelligent and earnest 
seeker to find his own way into the Church. Among 
his many interests and intimacies there were few 
close ties or friendships connecting him with the body 
of Christians toward which conviction was leading 
him. His old and valued associate, Dr. J. I. T. Cool- 
idge, had taken orders in the Episcopal Church, but 
he had left Boston and become assistant minister at 
St. John's Church, Providence. In the city and its 
environs there was not one to whom he turned for 
sympathy or counsel. It will be seen that the follow- 
ing letters of approval and welcome were all from 
comparative strangers, but they were none the less 
hearty in their expressions. 

Church of the Advent, 
Boston, Jan. 5, 1S60. 

Rev. and dear Sir: — I am reading your volume 
of Sermons, and though I have not finished the pe- 
rusal of all, nor indeed of any as I hope to do, for 
they are sermons for devotional study more than for 
reading, merely, yet I have read enough to fill me with 
joy and gratitude to God. May I not also be per- 
mitted to express my thanks to you r 

To me it is very marvelous that one occupying 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 201 

your standpoint, could become so true and valiant 
a defender of "the faith once delivered to the saints." 
For I have generally regarded such an attainment 
as almost impossible, without the long-continued 
teaching of the Church Catholic by the instrument- 
ality of her ecclesiastical system of worship and 
sacraments. Pardon me for saying this, which I did 
not intend when I first took up my pen, my object 
being only to express my exceeding thankfulness and 

joy. 

Praying God's blessing upon you, I am, 
Very respectfully, 

Your obliged friend, 

James A. Bolles. 

Baltimore, Jan. 6, 1860. 
(Twelfth Day). 

My dear Sir : — I cannot forbear to write to 
you any longer, seeing I have so fine an opportunity. 
Miss Phelps called on me, bright and early this fine 
morning of the Feast, to show me your letter to her, 
and to put the question you so kindly referred to me. 

But before answering it, "laud be to God" that 
it is in your heart to think of it ! May the blessed Spirit 
ripen into action so good a thought, and show you the 
blessed inheritance you will provide for yourself and 
your children, at so great a "price — for it is a great 
tiling, and must be a trial, to change old relations, 
and lose (perhaps) old friends. I assure you that 
any who can love you less for so conscientious a sac- 
rifice will be amply made up to you, by the warm and 
loving hearts that will welcome you to the fold of 
your fathers again and by that ennobling sense which 



202 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

an Anglican enjoys, of sympathy and unity with the 
illustrious men of our race and with the worthies of 
Primitive Christendom. Truly — the insensibility 
of our educated countrymen to the loss they suffer 
by living out of the religious heritage of the "Anglo- 
Saxon" people, and out of sympathy with its gi- 
gantic achievements, is (as the French say) ignoble. 

The Canon has no reference to the prayers of a 
College-Chapel which are virtually "Family-Prayers," 
— and which any bishop, who understands himself, 
will pronounce entirely out of the limits of our Legis- 
lation. If it should be requisite I am sure I can give 
you the opinions of some of our best Canonists to 
that effect. 

Believe me, I am greatly obliged to you for all your 
kindness. 

Faithfully your friend and servant, 

A. Cleveland Coxe. 

Middletown, Conn., Feb. 2, 1860. 

Rev. and dear Sir: — I am almost afraid you 
will think me impertinently intrusive in addressing 
you; and yet I am unwilling to refrain any longer, 
from doing what I have long desired to do. 

It will not surprise you to find any one saying, that 
he has followed your steps with interest and thank- 
fulness. I certainly have done so, feeling both in no 
ordinary degree; and I am sure you will not wonder, 
I trust you will not be displeased, when I say, that 
it has seemed to me, that the branch of Christ's Church 
in which I am an unworthy Minister, might finally 
offer you a house of rest. 

Whether that be so or not, I beg to be allowed to ex- 






DIVINE GUIDANCE 203 

press my strong sympathy with you, in these con- 
victions, which have led you from the same religious 
body in which I myself was educated, and for many 
members of which I retain a very strong affection. 

My dear Sir, may I ask you, at your convenience, 
and if and when it is agreeable to you, to favor me 
with a visit here ? I have perhaps some right to ask 
this, of which you do not know. My father was in 
his lifetime a friend of yours. And, unless I am in 
error, a brother of yours married a near relation of 
mine. In our New England usage, this may be an 
excuse for what, even with it, perhaps, is a great 
liberty. 

At all events, you will I trust permit me to offer the 
assurances of my sincere respect and admiration, 
and to say that I am very sincerely yours, 
Jxo. Williams, 

Assistant Bishop of Connecticut. 

Philadelphia, Feb. 4, 1860. 

Rev. and dear Sir: — I hope you will not con- 
sider me obtrusive, if in obeying an impulse that has 
possessed me for some days, I presume so far upon 
our slight acquaintance as to offer you my sincere 
sympathy and gratulation in reference to your present 
position, both theological and ecclesiastical, specially 
the former, 

I have been, in common with many others, mindful 
of the progress you were making in Divine knowledge, 
from your articles in your Magazine, and likewise 
aware of the peculiarity of your relations at Harvard, 
which seemed critical of great results. 

TYhen I learned from the papers that you had re- 



204 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

signed your position I had a strong feeling of disap- 
pointment amounting almost to the sense of defeat, 
Your labors in the college seemed so prosperous 
that there needed only to be toleration to work a 
thorough change in the character of the Institution, 
and for this the friends of the Evangelical faith hoped 
and prayed. 

Of course it is no matter of surprise that the tolera- 
tion was not granted freely or that it should be stren- 
uously refused, just in proportion to the force of the 
demand and the activity of your efforts. But, without 
knowing precisely how much of personal discomfort 
you might have to bear in consequence, I did hope 
that your persistency would live down the opposi- 
tion and make you hero and confessor even if martyr. 

I do not of course presume in my ignorance to 
judge of the propriety of your resignation, but I may 
tender you my sympathy as a brother in Christ and 
my thanks for the noble work you have already done. 

I am challenged to this, all the more, from having 
read with delight your last volume. My heart goes 
out towards you as I read, and I feel the wish to take 
you by the hand and say so. 

I remember, moreover, a remark you made to me 
one evening at Mr. Savage's in reply to a question of 
mine, viz., that if either you or Mr. Coolidge would 
leave your positions you would find your place in the 
Episcopal Church. 

Your feelings may be changed in this respect, al- 
though I suppose, still, that both your deliberations 
and your feelings, the more ripe they are, will deter- 
mine you the more towards this conclusion as the 
repose of your soul. Be this, however, as the guiding 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 205 

spirit shall direct. Let me assure you of the earnest 
and fraternal interest with which I am, and shall be, 
Your brother in Christ, 

Alex. H. Vinton. 

St. Luke's Hospital, 
New York, April 3, 1860. 

Rev. and dear Sir : — I take the liberty of ad- 
dressing you for the purpose of begging your accept- 
ance of these pamphlets, herewith sent, which I flatter 
myself you may look over with some interest, — at 
least, they will serve as one way of acknowledging 
the great interest and pleasure with which I have read 
your eloquent and more generally edifying pages. 

I am more in your debt than you may be aware. I 
have not waited for your Episcopal ordination to 
let your voice be heard in my church, — you have 
preached to my congregation more than once, and 
greatly to their satisfaction, having learned to listen 
when I discourse to them in other words than my 
own, and so to enjoy the privilege of hearing the great 
preachers, the living or dead. 

Greeting you as an able minister of the new Testa- 
ment, — and welcoming you to a field of labor in 
which we shall be nearer neighbors, I am yours, 
Very respectfully and sincerely, 

W. A. Muhlenberg, 
Pastor of the Church of the Holy 
Communion and of St. Luke's Hospital, New York. 

The following extract from a letter written by a 
churchwoman, then a resident in Cambridge, em- 
bodies the sentiments of a large circle of devout be- 



206 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

lievers among the laity. "How can I express to you 
the congratulations and thankfulness I feel, that you 
are so soon to become joined in very deed to the visible 
body of Christ's flock, henceforth to devote all your 
energies and influence to doing the most good in the 
best way. I have heard that you said that Episcopalians 
had done nothing to persuade you to join them, but 
they did pray, and how earnestly, God knoweth." 

As soon as his final decision was made, Dr. Hunt- 
ington found a home for his wife and children at old 
Christ Church, Cambridge, where they were made 
welcome by the excellent rector, Rev. Dr. Nicholas 
Hoppin. There was much that was agreeable in the 
ecclesiastical impressions gained from this historic 
building; "our ancient Church," as it is called by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the memorial poem, where 
he describes it as standing beneath the loftier spire 
of the edifice on the other side of the old burying 
ground. 

" Like sentinel and nun they keep 
Their vigil on the green ; 
One seems to guard and one to weep 
The dead that lie between." 

On the day before the family began their attendance 
at Christ Church, George Huntington received from 
his father the following words of counsel: — 

Cambridge, Jan. 21, 1860. 

Dear George : — In order to help you in a full 
and easy observance of all the parts of the Church- 
Service, I present you a book for use in the church, 
which contains not only the " Common Prayer," 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 207 

with the Psalms and Hymns, but also the Proper 
Scripture Lessons for the several days, in order. 

In becoming accustomed to this mode of worship, 
— so venerable, impressive, and beautiful, — you will 
find much assistance in beginning with an entire 
compliance with all the usages of the place. Other- 
wise you will not feel in harmony with those about you, 
•and a sense of strangeness will hinder your prayers 
and praise. If you would enter happily into it, and 
get your soul engaged in it, comply with each rever- 
ential custom from the outset. What is half-done 
is never well done. I refer to such acts as kneeling, 
responding, keeping the place, following the minis- 
ter throughout. It is a proper and reverential custom, 
on first taking one's seat in the pew, each time, to 
kneel and to bend and cover the head, saying a short 
petition or invocation for a blessing on the service; 
a prayer for right thoughts, and that all forbidden 
desires and fancies may be kept away; that a real 
spiritual benefit may be obtained; that God's Holy 
^Yord and Commandment may be understood and 
obeyed faithfully and received into the heart; that 
the Day may be kept holy, and the place holy; with 
other such requests, having a proper beginning and 
end, like the Collects. Indeed you can take the lan- 
guage of some of the Collects in the Book, or frame 
one for yourself. If you like, commit a form to memory. 
Only let it be sincere, reverential, and not omitted. 

Nothing is more just and right and graceful, and 
few things are so good, for the manly heart, as for 
a man to go upon his knees. Begin so, and you will 
hereafter be glad. 

My dear George, I rejoice in you, more and more, 



208 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

as a good, obedient, believing son. I am satisfied 
you mean to follow our Saviour, and live by his holy 
religion. 

May that blessed religion always guide you! I 
desire nothing for you so much, because there is no 
good so great. 

Affectionately yours, 

F. D. H. 

In the month of May, Professor Huntington went 
to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. To his 
son he wrote a long account of St. Luke's Hospital, 
which he visited with Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg. The 
spirit of the Institution and of its founder filled him 
with enthusiasm and delight. 

"As I walked away, seeing what this good man, 
with his beautiful charity, his tranquil, pure face, 
and white locks of hair, was doing as he moved about 
tenderly among the victims of disease (beside having 
started a very strong Free Church in the centre of 
the City and educated many young men for the min- 
istry), I could not help feeling how noble his life had 
been, and how willing he might be to die. Surely, 
he will have the promise: "The Lord shall make all 
his bed for him in his sickness.'" 

To his Sister : 

I made acquaintance with many of the clergy and 
laity of the Church I have joined, and of course it was 
interesting to me to see and study the system, where 
it is so full of activity, strength and missionary zeal. 
May some of the lessons I learned bear fruit in my 
future works! 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 209 

After his last sermon preached in the Congregational 
Church in Cambridge, Sunday evening, Feb. 26, 
Dr. Huntington, now a candidate for Orders in the 
Episcopal Church, became himself a worshiper at 
Christ Church, teaching a large Bible class in con- 
nection with the Sunday-school. On the feast of the 
Annunciation, March 25, 1860, he received the rite 
of Confirmation at the hands of Rt. Rev. Manton 
Eastburn, the Bishop of Massachusetts. His wife 
and eldest son and daughter were confirmed in the 
class, which was a large one, including a number 
of mature people. 

Rev. Dan Huntington, the professor's aged father, 
had been reared in the traditions of Connecticut 
Puritanism, and not even the liberalizing tendencies 
of his later years could eradicate its prejudices. He 
knew nothing of bishops, and distrusted with all his 
might the system which conferred power upon them. 
The needs of his religious nature were satisfied with 
the simplicity of the ecclesiastical training of his fore- 
fathers. His son's departure from the old ways of 
Congregational polity was unintelligible to him. The 
following letter was written to allay his uneasiness, 
so far as was possible with an old man long past the 
age of controversy. 

Cambridge, March 17, 1860. 
My dear Father : — My intention now is to 
come to you on the 26th., Monday. That evening I 
have to give a Charity lecture for a Baptist (not an 
Episcopal) Parish, in Springfield. Most of my ser- 
vices in that line are given to denominations that I 
do not belong to. In fact they give me so much to do 



210 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

in that way that I am busy enough without doing much 
preaching. You have misapprehended Bishop East- 
burn entirely. If you knew him at all, you would re- 
spect and love him. He is one of the most earnest and 
devoted Christians I have ever seen, — simple in his 
manners, kind in his disposition, loving all those who 
love the Lord Jesus Christ, and glad to cooperate with 
them in helping on the kingdom of Heaven among 
men. He has nothing at all to do with affording me 
this pleasant and profitable vacation, which I needed 
so much and am enjoying so much, — except to carry 
out a wise and useful rule of the Church to which 
he belongs, as he is in duty bound to do. Indeed he 
has not come near me with any interposition or 
command on the subject. I have joined a branch of the 
Church where this rule is followed, with my eyes 
open, and of course I choose to follow the rule. I 
consider it, for many reasons, a wise and good one, 
— in my case as well as others. But Bishop Eastburn 
has no pleasure in my omitting to preach. Indeed 
he has done and said everything that a Christian 
gentleman could do and say, to make my way easy 
and pleasant and to avoid the least appearance of dic- 
tation. He would be glad to have me come and be his 
colleague in old Trinity Church. Indeed, I think, he 
would resign his ministry there, and give it up to me 
altogether, if I would accept it. 

You speak of my " not doing anything which can- 
not be undone." Of course the way out of any Church 
is open, and whenever I wish to do so, I can leave one 
Fold for another. But for the present I love the Epis- 
copal Church. I honor it more and more; I long to 
be at work within it; Providence permitting, I shall 



DIVINE GUIDANCE 211 

be a Preacher in it next Fall. I am ashamed to have 
been so long ignorant of its claims to belief and attach- 
ment; its historical foundation; its glorious Saints and 
Martyrs; its liberty and piety; its generous and com- 
prehensive doctrine of the Communion; its dignified, 
orderly, and impressive worship; its internal peace 
and harmony; its love for children and youth. When 
you consider what I have given up and gone thro' 
for the sake of belonging to it, you will not suppose 
that I can be easily turned aside from the course in 
which God is leading me. I am sorry it is not the way 
of my fathers. But I am sure it is the way of my 
fathers' fathers, for ages. 

Let us be less anxious to have those we love think 
just as we do. God's love is very large. Heaven is 
open to all that love, believe and obey — 

" Where the Saints of all ages in harmony meet, 
Their Saviour and brethren transported to greet." 

Wherein we differ let us wait till we reach the 
world of light. 

Your very affectionate son, 

Frederic. 



CHAPTER VD 

THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 

"Whose delectable mountains are these, and -whose are the sheep 
that feed them ? The monntains are Emmanuel-land, and are within 
sight of his city, and the sheep are his." 

Those who rejoice in the present strength and ac- 
tivity of the Episcopal Church in Boston will recall 
with interest the conditions existing half a century 
ago. In those days its character was distinguished 
to a marked degree by a strict conservatism, a dig- 
nified respectability, an acknowledged exclusiveness. 
It stood with emphasis for what it represented, but 
there was little concern for church extension. The 
head of the diocese adhered strongly to the tenets 
of doctrine which are distinctly Protestant. While 
his personal qualities made him decisive in adminis- 
tration and unfaltering in pulpit utterance, in leader- 
ship of men on the delicate and difficult lines of the 
episcopate his jurisdiction failed to leave a perma- 
nent impress. The ecclesiastical matters which most 
occupied his mind were connected with what was then 
known as the "Tractarian movement," just coming 
into prominence, and which aroused his intense oppo- 
sition. But in the years following 1860, while the use 
of altar decorations and the practice of unaccustomed 
ceremonials were openly rebuked, there was no such 
direct contention over matters of ritual as to disturb 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 213 

the currents of Church life. Of the sixty-seven parishes 
in Massachusetts there were at that time but seven 
directly within the city of Boston, all stable and pros- 
perous; Trinity under the pastorate of Bishop East- 
burn himself; the Church of the Advent, devotional 
in spirit and zealous in good works; and St. Paul's, 
long influenced by the powerful ministry of Dr. 
Alexander Vinton. At the latter's departure in 1858, 
an unsettled feeling arose among some of his parish- 
ioners. From this and other causes it became evident 
to men's minds that the time was ripe for a new parish. 
It seemed natural that it should be established west 
of the Public Garden, on the new-made land which 
promised soon to be occupied as a residence portion 
of the city. 

There was much involved, however, beyond the ad- 
vantages derived from selecting a site in a locality 
likely to be surrounded by an influential population. 
To the minds of those associated with this enterprise, 
came undoubtedly an impulse from the religious Re- 
vival in England, following the Oxford publications, 
balanced by strongly Puritan tendencies, prejudice 
against externalism, distrust of clerical prerogative 
and dread of a sacramental system. Another in- 
fluence, especially attractive to a certain class of 
minds, was the school of thought, led by Arnold and 
Maurice, which aroused enthusiasm on hues sure to be 
predominant in a new organization. Some of those 
who had made part of the congregation at St. Paul's 
were drawn thither from the Congregational body 
by Dr. Vinton's deep scriptural instruction. To their 
earnest seeking after truth the devotional spirit of the 
liturgy made a strong appeal. Others came from the 



214 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Unitarian societies disaffected with Theodore Parker's 
popularity in his own denomination, and deprecating 
further departure from the liberal thought of Dr. 
Channing's day. The agitation on political affairs, 
the unrest of approaching civil strife, tended to make 
this period one when the sundering of old ties and the 
forming of new ones seemed a part of the religious 
as well as of the outer world. The little band whom 
these compelling forces drew together, met for the first 
time at the residence of Dr. William R. Lawrence, at 
98 Beacon Street, on March 17, 1860, to take the ini- 
tial steps towards the formation of a new parish, which 
organized as Emmanuel Church, on Easter Monday, 
April 27, 1860. 

Already an informal engagement had been made 
with Dr. Huntington, and it seemed most suitable 
that the choice of a rector should fall upon one who 
was conspicuous for a course which some of them 
had followed, and who held in his own nature the 
differing elements represented in the movement itself. 
No man could be better fitted to control the attention 
of hearers, and to unite into a harmonious parish, 
those who were descendants of the old Standing 
Order of New England, Boston liberals, Evangelical 
believers, and the new generation who sought a more 
catholic observance of the Christian year, and a 
fuller expression of the spiritual beauty of the Church's 
services, than a preacher who had been reared in 
Calvinism, nurtured under the noble utterances of the 
early Unitarian divines, and yet, through conviction 
as well as taste and inclination, had found his way into 
the bosom of the Mother Church. 

It has been seen that in the consideration of the 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 215 

future, various paths opened before the Plummer 
professor, on his resignation. There was at the first 
some fascination in the suggestion which presented 
itself unbidden to his imagination, of an independent 
Society, fashioned on his own lines, welcoming those 
who were of congenial taste and religious affinity. 
But this vision melted before the grave question whither 
it would ultimately send youth, trained under an indi- 
vidual enterprise, and going out from its fold. It gave 
place to the strong claims of an historic Episcopate, 
and an organized Christianity, to the grander concep- 
tion of the minister as an ambassador of the King- 
dom of Christ. 

One of the first proposals came as an offer of the 
place of assistant minister at Trinity Church, Bos- 
ton, on the Green Foundation. In his letter of reply, 
Dr. Huntington acknowledges the honor done him 
and expresses a strong sense of the attractions held 
out, but explains that he had already pledged himself 
to another field of labor. How ardently this latter 
fired his enthusiasm and appealed to his aims and 
hopes, may be seen from the letter announcing the 
decisive action for the formation of the new parish. 

Cambridge, May 1, 1860. 
To A. J. 

The gracious Head of the Fold has permitted the 
organization of the Parish of "Emmanuel Church." 
I think you will like the holy, significant, and musical 
Name, and see its fitness as emphasizing the great 
doctrine which the Spirit has revealed to me. The plan 
is to worship in a hired hall for a year or more, while 
the Church-building is erected on the new lands at 



216 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the foot of the Public Garden; and to begin in Sep- 
tember, immediately after my ordination as Deacon, 
the date of which is not yet fixed. Everything seems 
sufficiently promising so far. The men enlisted are 
in earnest, and if God will we shall prosper. That 
" God with us " may there manifest his glory in turning 
souls from error to truth, and from Satan to himself, 
let us humbly and faithfully pray. 

My confidence, hope and joy and peace in the 
ministry, were never before what they are now. 

On September 12, 1860, Frederic Dan Huntington 
was admitted to the Order of Deacons in Trinity 
Church, Boston, by the Rt. Rev. Manton Eastburn, 
Bishop of Massachusetts. The Rt. Rev. George Bur- 
gess of the diocese of Maine preached the sermon. 
On the following Sunday the opening devotional ser- 
vices of Emmanuel Church were held by the new 
rector at the temporary place of worship in Mechanics' 
Hall, Bedford Street. A large congregation assembled, 
and the first sermon before the flock thus gathered 
together was on the subject of " The Cross, its three- 
fold glory, and its blessing." 

In a communication, the previous June, to one of 
the prominent laymen of the parish, Dr. Huntington 
had suggested that provision be made in the hall 
for those who could not afford to pay regularly for 
seats. This was the first of the protests, which he 
never ceased to repeat, against the policy of hired 
pews in a sanctuary. A courteous reply from his 
correspondent, Dr. William R. Lawrence, engages 
that "provision will be cheerfully made by sittings 
appropriate to such use, and also by seats hired and 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 217 

not used by those who have united with us. Nearly 
all have taken more seats than they require for their 
families." In the leaflet which was immediately dis- 
tributed among the worshipers, provision was made 
for all the ministrations of a thoroughly equipped 
parish, both on the side of the rector and of his flock. 
Each week, was a Friday evening service and a Wed- 
nesday afternoon Bible class. For the carrying of the 
Gospel and its beneficent influences, spiritual and 
temporal, to the less privileged, ten departments of 
work were planned, with an introductory note inti- 
mating that every regular attendant at divine worship 
was expected to select from them one or more lines 
of personal service. 

From the beginning Emmanuel was a working 
church. However powerful the preaching might be 
in attracting hearers and building up a strong con- 
gregation, it was not upon spoken words from the 
pulpit, but by the living testimony of devout believ- 
ers, through their own acts of self-sacrifice, that the 
record of the future was to depend. The training of 
the children of the flock, with the necessary measures 
for the conduct of an efficient Sunday-school, came 
first in importance, and connected with it were 
committees for looking up youth who were strangers 
in the city, for hospitality to occasional worshipers, 
for the direction and observance of the festivals of 
the Church. In the line of aggressive missionary 
work was the opening of a Sunday-school in the neg- 
lected portion of the city, care and visiting of the 
sick, hospital relief, and charitable assistance to 
the indigent. The rector himself opened the Mission 
on the evening of Jan. 6, 1861. Before the New Year 



218 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the first confirmation in Emmanuel parish was held 
at Trinity Church, when a large class was presented, 
the greater number of persons being in middle life. 

Frederic Dan Huntington was advanced to the 
Priesthood on March 22, 1861, in the Church of the 
Messiah, Boston, by the Bishop of the diocese, Rt. 
Rev. Man ton Eastburn. The sermon was preached 
by the Rev. Henry Burroughs. 

After the organization of the parish there had been 
no delay in preparing plans and prosecuting the work 
of erecting a suitable church edifice. The site was 
on Newbury Street, just beyond the Public Garden, 
which at that time formed the western boundary of the 
improved land. Beyond, where had been the waters 
of the Back Bay, was a wilderness, with the gravel- 
trains bringing in the substratum for the new lands 
and the tall skeletons of the pile-driving machines 
outlined against the sky. Arlington Street was soon 
appropriated to stately private residences. From 
thence to the Common, Boylston Street was in those 
days a quiet residence district. It was here, conven- 
iently near the new church, that Dr. Huntington 
established his household. The home seemed small, 
after the commodious quarters in Cambridge, but it 
was made sufficient not only for the family but 
for parochial purposes. The rector's study was in 
the back parlor, and the front room served for com- 
mittee meetings, parish conferences, and the weekly 
Bible class. While, on one side of the folding-doors, 
the busy pastor wrote his sermons or listened to varied 
appeals for sympathy or counsel, on the other the young 
assistant rector held interviews with his corps of 
helpers and inaugurated the Mission work. Rev. 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 219 

William Reed Huntington began his ministry in a 
little room over a carpenter's shop. Giving part of 
his time on Sundays to Emmanuel Church, most of 
his energies were devoted to seeking out and instruct- 
ing stray souls in that neglected district which made 
up the Mission field. In this rude chapel Dr. Hunt- 
ington himself loved to preach. His own vision for 
Emmanuel had been that of a great People's Church. 
This plan was not carried into effect, partly because 
the minds of those controlling the movement for a 
new parish were not prepared for all that was involved 
in the abandonment of a system of rented pews, and 
partly because the stress of financial uncertainty, 
accompanying civil disturbance, limited the size of 
the structure. A further modification in the plans 
adopted by the building committee caused Dr. Hunt- 
ington some disappointment. He greatly deprecated 
their decision to erect the side and rear walls of 
brick, with the fa£ade only of stone. With the style 
of the architecture, the form, proportions, and details 
he was abundantly satisfied. But he earnestly ad- 
vocated a spirit of genuinenesss in the complete 
work. "A building with a front of one material for 
show, and an inferior material for the parts a little less 
exposed, is an insincere building." In spite of this 
appeal, made at some length and with all the argu- 
ments at his command, the building committee felt 
that they had a practical situation to meet. In order 
to keep within the funds placed in their hands they 
were forced to make some changes in the original plan. 
Permission however was given to the rector to raise 
an additional sum of five thousand dollars to carry 
out the design. One subscription of a thousand dollars 



220 FREDERIC DAX HUNTINGTON 

was made, but this was all. The "'sermon in stones," 
so much in accordance with his own integrity of char- 
acter was not to be. but in other respects the beautiful 
structure was a joy and a cause of thanksgiving to 
the preacher whose ringing words echoed within its walls 
for seven years. In his weekly record of Services Dr. 
Huntington writes on December 15, 1861: Emmanuel 
Church opened. Laus Deo! 

The consecration took place April 24, 1862. Rev. 
Dr. Muhlenberg preaching the sermon. In his an- 
nual address to the Convention of the diocese Bishop 
Eastburn says of this auspicious occasion : "May 
the sanctuary thus dedicated to the Most High be 
ever a place in which His presence shall dwell, and in 
which many souls, through the blessing of the Holy 
Spirit in the Ministry of the Word, shall be born into 
the new life of repentance toward God, and faith toward 
our Lord Jesus Christ : " a prayer of Episcopal bene- 
diction which we must believe to have been answered, 
in the fullness of Divine mercy. 

One of the first questions which the rector of 
the new parish had to meet was that of his attitude 
towards those parties within the Church known as 
"High" and "Low." a nomenclature now happily 
less often applied. Even before his ordination a note 
of timidity was sounded through the remonstrance of 
an influential member of the society just inaugurated. 
Some words uttered by Dr. Huntington on a public 
occasion, were repeated with alarm, lest in exalting 
the Church which had lately won his allegiance he 
might be open to distrust by those who, as the good 
layman admitted, were ready "to scent Puseyism 
in a gesture, and Popery in the cut of a garment." 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 221 

In the following spring a letter of inquiry from an- 
other source elicited the following more detailed re- 
joinder. 

Boston, April 19, 1861. 

My dear Sir : — Perhaps it would comport best 
with my practice, not to say my rule, to offer to your 
letter the general reply that in all party questions 
in the Episcopal Church I take little interest, and can 
take no side. A certain tone of manly frankness in 
your communication, however, touches me, and 
moves me to a different course. 

To an earnest mind standing without this Branch 
of Christ's Flock, the evils and mischiefs of its party 
division appear even greater than they do within it. 
Multitudes, throughout the country, are seen to be 
restrained from joining it by this unhappy cause. I 
came in, after a very careful and patient study of the 
religious systems prevailing about us, — under a de- 
liberate and thorough conviction that our ecclesias- 
tical economy, tho' by no means perfect, is yet, by 
far, more in conformity with the gospel plan and the 
primitive pattern than any other, better suited to the 
hearts of men, and better adapted to all the proper 
offices of the Lord's living Body in this age and coun- 
try. The times and sacrifices incidental to my change 
of relations, the attention necessarily given to the 
distinctive points, and the large opportunity I have 
had for observing denominational peculiarities, have 
naturally occasioned in me, I suppose, a strong and 
lively preference for the Church of my adoption. 
On the other hand, the greater part of the partisan con- 
troversy in this Church seems to me weak and wrong. 



222 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

I do not mean to deny that real and important differences 
exist among us, such as a due honor for the Master 
and his Truth will not allow us wholly to ignore. It 
may even be said that there are two definable ten- 
dencies at work, leading to two extremes. A few per- 
sons, on either side, may have traveled to those ex- 
tremes. But the vast majority do not admit of any 
such twofold classification. There is no clear line 
dividing them. They are of all kinds, shades and 
intermixtures. For example, it is evident that there 
is such a thing as an ultra-ecclesiastical, a sacramen- 
tarian view of Christianity which is dangerous and 
false, not in Romanism only, but also within our Pro- 
testant Episcopal organization. I have no sort of 
sympathy with it. I protest against it, with all the 
convictions of my soul, and with all my might. And 
yet when I hear men who seem to me humble, and 
holy, and Christian sweepingly charged with setting up 
sacraments before Christ, the sin of uncharitableness 
seems to me equal to the sin of bad doctrine. The 
language is too indiscriminate, and names of the 
parties are vaguely, erroneously, and sometimes 
cruelly applied. . . . 

As to Ceremonialism, if I know myself at all, it 
is neither in my blood, my tastes, my culture, nor my 
convictions. I do not feel drawn that way. In pos- 
tures, and decorations, and all that pertains to what 
are commonly called externals, I want nothing beyond 
the dignified, decent and reverent observances common 
to the great majority of Church people in both par- 
ties. In most matters of administration I probably 
incline to rather more than the usual liberty and variety, 
where the Prayer-Boole and Canons do not direct. . . . 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 223 

Much as I love this Apostolical Order, my whole 
life would have been lived to little purpose if I did not 
recognize the Christianity of other Households of 
Faith. I believe in a rubrical and spiritual worship, 
an Evangelical pulpit, and a canonical and liberal 
discipline. But you propose a specific inquiry, or a 
particular case supposed. Should I vote in Convention 
on a strictly party question, with the delegates of 
my parish for the sake of Parish agreement ? I can- 
not answer that because the case does not stand out 
simple and clear before my mind. TVith my limited 
knowledge of Convention proceedings, it is not easy 
to conceive of a purely party question divested of all 
other elements. If such a question should ever arise, 
I should be likely to feel very little respect for it. I 
should hate to vote on it at all. If voting at all, I 
should try so to vote as not to express a party-feeling. 
As to the delegates, I should be perhaps as likely to 
expect them to vote with me, as to conform my vote 
to theirs. But, as I said, I cannot shape the condition in 
my thoughts clearly enough for a satisfactory reply. 

Permit me to add that I am glad to see an intelli- 
gent layman sufficiently interested in these subjects 
to take the trouble to seek for opinions of no more 
moment than mine. 

I confide in your promise to make no public use of 
these private words and no unnecessary reference to 
them. 

Yours very sincerely, 

F. D. Huxtingtox. 

An indorsement on the above shows that the MS. 
was returned after a copy was taken to read to the 



*224 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

vestry of Emmanuel Church. Its occasion was evi- 
dently the approaching Convention of the diocese of 
Massachusetts, the first at which Dr. Huntington 
took his place among the clerical members, although 
he had been afforded a seat by courtesy in the pre- 
vious May, while a candidate for Holy Orders. 
Henceforth, he was to be a power for the extension 
of Christ's kingdom in that assembly, which he at- 
tended for eight succeeding sessions. In June, 1863, 
he was made by the Board of Missions chairman 
of the Executive committee, a special missionary 
agency, at that time appointed to " present the cause 
of missions in such churches as might be willing to 
receive their appeal." The two clergymen thus em- 
powered to begin an active campaign of missionary 
enlightenment were Dr. George M. Randall, rector 
of the Church of the Messiah, Boston, later a pioneer 
bishop in the West, and the rector of Emmanuel 
Church. Dr. Huntington threw himself into this 
enterprise with all the ardor of his nature, and that 
energy which delighted to endure fatigue and over- 
come difficulties. In his Report to the Convention 
of May, 1864, he says of himself and his co-worker, 
that "they have traveled over nearly all parts of the 
territory of the State and have visited and addressed, 
besides the District Associations, thirty-five Parishes." 
A plan of systematic offerings for missions was recom- 
mended in these visits, so as to "encourage not only 
every man and every woman but every child to sig- 
nify in writing beforehand how much each one would 
give at stated intervals. The time seems propitious 
for extending the knowledge and influence of our 
Church." 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 225 

In 1865 Dr. Huntington was elected chairman of a 
committee on new parishes, a position which brought 
him in close connection with the organized efforts for 
establishing the church in growing towns and in those 
districts where the services of the church had not been 
held. These places he personally assisted, often by 
his own visits and preaching, by providing lay-readers 
and clerical supplies, and obtaining gifts and stipends 
to continue the work. The first service held in the 
town of Woburn was arranged through him and a 
missionary station established. During the early 
months of his ministry in Boston he gave his Sunday 
evenings to St. Peter's, Cambridgeport, then weak 
and in need of assistance. From the beginning of the 
Maiden parish he interested himself in its welfare, 
continuing his aid until his son, Rev. George Putnam 
Huntington, after serving as a lay-reader, was called 
to the rectorship. The first services at Grace Church, 
Amherst, an important point in the diocese, were held 
by Dr. Huntington himself during his summer vaca- 
tion in 1864, and he entered into the organization of 
the parish with all the enthusiasm which his love for 
his alma mater, and for the locality of his birth, nat- 
urally inspired. The beautiful stone church, in the 
erection of which he took much delight, was largely 
due to his efforts. For the remainder of his life Dr. 
Huntington rejoiced to minister at the altar of this 
sanctuary which became a place of worship for his 
household while at Hadley. 

It was the custom at Emmanuel to hold the second 
service on the Lord's day in the afternoon, and this 
left the rector free to afford assistance on Sunday even- 
ings to other parishes. Sometimes a call came for an 



226 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

occasion in the city, in the interest of some public 
cause, but more often he went out of town to some 
small flock. His own record shows that during the 
nine years of his ministry to a large congregation of 
his own, he preached in fifty-six of the sixty or seventy 
churches of the diocese, not only once, but frequently 
a number of times, in the same place. Especially was 
this the case among the smaller flocks within reach of 
his summer home, and, like his father before him, he 
traveled by carriage up and down the Connecticut 
Valley and across the hills, seldom resting for a Sunday 
during his vacation. 

Circumstances placed him where the care and over- 
sight connected with the growth of the diocese became 
an interest and an obligation. In I860 he was elected 
chairman of the Standing committee to fill the vacancy 
caused by the elevation of Dr. Randall to the Episco- 
pate in the missionary district of Colorado. In the 
following year Dr. Huntington presented, for adoption 
by the Convention, a new missionary canon, the result 
of which was the unification of those organizations 
already in existence, and the establishment of a board 
elected by the Convention, and entitled, "The Execu- 
tive Missionary Committee." Under this provision 
Dr. Huntington was made chairman of the new com- 
mittee, and his full report to the succeeding Convention 
in 1867 reviewed the field open for mission work in 
Massachusetts. While the speaker complained that 
the finances were in arrears and the missionaries not 
fully paid, he boldly asked for double the sum con- 
tributed the past year. He said: " It cannot certainly 
be suffered that the value of the knowledge of the 
Gospel of Salvation and of the Church through whose 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 227 

ordinances it is ministered, is less to a given number 
of souls here in New England than in any other part 
of the world. It will be a long time yet before this part 
of the country ceases to exercise on the newly settled 
territories a powerful moral and intellectual control. 
The current of civilizing and refining, and to great 
extent of evangelizing influences, must continue to set 
from the north and east to the west and south. The 
changes that are going on in religious thought and 
conviction offer a peculiarly favorable opportunity for 
the introduction of the truth of Scripture through the 
Apostolic System, to almost any village in the Com- 
monwealth. We know of many considerable settle- 
ments where no sanctuary for the worship of the Most 
High God is built. In a very large number there is 
already a disposition to welcome our Church services 
both for the edification of grown people, and especially 
for the training of the young. . . . 

"Throughout the land our church appears to be 
awaking as never before to her great commission and 
to be conscious of her neglected privilege. Are we 
moving with the stirring movement under the breath 
of the Spirit ? " With such earnest appeal the oppor- 
tunity was laid before the clergy and laity assembled 
and practical suggestions offered for holding services 
through a special missionary in new communities, 
such work to be strengthened and ministered to by 
neighboring rectors. The chairman urged that the 
amount to be appropriated for the ensuing year be 
again made twice that of the past. He reported that 
the appropriations had been promptly paid through 
collections made at Emmanuel Church. Here, among 
his own people, the rector ceased not to urge, exhort, 



228 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

admonish, concerning the duty of making liberal gifts 
for the support of the gospel in other fields. In an 
address before a delegate meeting of the Board of 
Missions in Providence in 1866, Dr. Huntington spoke 
on the " best means to be used by the parochial clergy 
for awakening and maintaining Missionary zeal in 
their own parishes." 

Out of his own rich experience and unusual success 
in arousing his congregation to a generous response, he 
mentioned, among other means of enlightenment, the 
value of giving detailed information as to the needs, 
the opportunity, the mode of operation and the prob- 
able or actual results of labors in the field. This was 
his own habit, and on some occasions an allusion to a 
special incident was made so telling, by the magnetism 
of his speech and his consummate art in arousing the 
feelings of his hearers, that the response came not only 
in large offertories, but in many private and generous 
gifts. Another point emphasized in his missionary 
address and carried into practice as a branch of his 
own parochial system was the importance of interest- 
ing the children in missionary objects. At the meetings 
which he inaugurated in his parish to arouse young and 
old, he gathered in the scholars of the Mission, who 
gave frequent and animating songs to add to the 
heartiness of the occasion. One of the measures of the 
new committee had been the inauguration of mission- 
ary convocations, and one of its reports mentions that 
at Emmanuel, after the stirring addresses in Epiphany, 
1868, a choir of children gave the carol, "We three 
Kings of Orient." 

Another line of effort to carry the gospel to neglected 
districts took shape in the organization of the " Epis- 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 229 

copal Evangelization Society," of which Dr. Hunting- 
ton was made president. Its purpose was to employ 
itinerants to hold services in the churchless regions 
among the indifferent and neglected, such preachers 
being known as " Evangelists." A notice in the press 
says that the address of the presiding officer, in which 
he laid before a public meeting the great possibilities 
of such a work, and the obligation incumbent upon 
Christians to sustain it, held "the congregation in the 
most rapt attention for three quarters of an hour." 
His argument was that the Apostolic custom might 
well be renewed, to go from place to place, " in jour- 
neyings often," and he urged that the times of great 
missionary effort are times of great refreshment to 
home churches. 

Among the objects of systematic offering which the 
people at Emmanuel were instructed to make was that 
of preaching the gospel to the Indian tribes in the 
West, interest in which was awakened through the 
labors of Bishop Whipple. In the autumn of 1863 a 
class of young women in the Sunday-school, under the 
instruction of Mrs. Homer, began to contribute to that 
object. The following spring, a society of church- 
women was formed called the " Dakota League," 
which became a general organization in the diocese of 
Massachusetts, for the advancement of work among 
the Indians, resulting eventually, in connection with 
some similar efforts, in the formation of the great 
Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions. 

Dr. Huntington's own sympathy with the mission- 
ary work in the West led him to send his eldest son to 
the frontier, as a teacher in the Seabury Divinity 
School. George Huntington had graduated from 



230 FREDERIC DAN HUXTIXGTOX 

Harvard College in 1864, and in that summer while 
absent on a vacation he received from his father a letter 
opening the plan. 

Hadley, Aug. 9, 1864. 

My dear George: — In reply to a letter of inquiry 
from me, Bishop Whipple and Dr. Breck have sent 
me a proposal to receive you at Faribault as an assist- 
ant in the instruction and management of their new 
Church-Seminary, consisting of a Divinity School and 
Preparatory Department. Your work will of course 
be in the latter, and you will be called to teach nothing 
to which you are not fully competent. These gentle- 
men suggest that you should only pursue the study of 
Hebrew, which you can acquire there to advantage, 
giving the rest of your time to tuition, and that you 
should be free to make new arrangements at the end of 
a year. 

This brings before you an important question for 
immediate decision. Without attempting to prejudge 
or to overrule the free choice of your own mind, I shall 
only put down the reasons as they appear to me. In 
favor of this plan then are the following considera- 
tions: — 

1. Direct helpfulness. Every day you would be 
rendering a service of some value to others; and more 
than that, a service bearing upon the highest interests, 
the ministry and the Church of Christ. 

2. A discipline for yourself. You will be in a con- 
stant practice of strengthening your faculties and 
communicating your knowledge. Maturity of char- 
acter, self-command, ease of manners, facility of lan- 
guage, a larger intercourse with men, a firmer pos- 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 231 

session of the rudiments of different branches of study, 
would be in some measure at least, among your gains; 
and these would be a great help to you in any pro- 
fession you might follow afterwards. 

3. You would have the best possible chance to test 
your attachment to and fitness for one of the two pro- 
fessions which you have determined to adopt, and thus 
your ultimate election would be a wiser and clearer one. 

4. You would be in immediate communication with 
gentlemen of as noble and fine a spirit, as high and 
disinterested a character, and as genuine refinement 
as can be found connected with any institution in the 
land, and joining to these qualities a very rare degree 
of energy, force, and practical sagacity. Thus you 
would come in contact with the ministry at the right 
point. 

5. You would be cast aloof from the set of associa- 
tions and influences with which you are thoroughly 
familiar, upon a fresh field; and this of itself would 
help give breadth to your education. Cambridge and 
Faribault, Massachusetts and Minnesota, would make 
a capital mixture. 

6. Your Harvard diploma and your good name 
would give you a good start in a community where 
a grand work of civilization is to be done. 

7. The climate is as fine as any on the continent. 

It is true all these promises might not be realized ; but 
there are fair elements in the case, and there is nothing 
extravagant or visionary in trusting them. 

There is a great deal else I should like to say, for 
my affections, sympathies, hopes, convictions are all 
deeply involved in this crisis of your life. Every day I 
pray God to direct you. Nothing I can conceive of 



232 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

holds out as good a promise as this proposal. I hope 
it may strike you favorably. 

Affectionately, my dear boy, 

Your father, 

F. D. H. 

Boston, June o, 1865. 

Dear George : — From our Easter collection I 
have directed 'the General Secretary to forward to 
Bishop Whipple, or in his absence to Dr. Breck, for 
the Missionary purpose of the diocese, $200; to Mr. 
Hinman, for the Dakota Mission, $100; and to Mr. 
Tanner $100. 

I was interested in your account of the Indian 
question, and received the paper giving a description 
of the recent murders. It would be childish in the 
Government to modify its policy, so far as it was 
favorable to the Missions, for one such outrage, or for 
half a dozen. The more savage the natives are, the 
more they need the softening and restraining influence 
of Christianity; and I trust General Grant's counter 
order is an indication of moderate and comprehensive 
measures. 

I will send you a cheque before you start for home. 
Would you not like to take this opportunity to see the 
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and the Natural Bridge 
in Virginia ? You might go from Chicago to Louisville, 
call on Dr. Craik, take the cars to the vicinity of the 
Cave, pass over to Virginia, and perhaps stop at one 
of the battle-fields, returning by way of Washington 
and Philadelphia. Regarding it as an advantageous 
part of your education I should be willing to provide 
the extra sum necessary for your expenses. It often 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 233 

occurs to me as a deficiency in my training that I have 
traveled so little. Some of the Parish here have lately 
been urging me to go to Europe ; but I feel little incli- 
nation, and very likely shall never undertake to cross the 
ocean. Perhaps your mother mentioned that, being on 
a journey to Buffalo, a few days ago, to look up a 
Headmaster for St. Mark's, Southboro, I had a few 
hours, asleep and awake, at Niagara. 

No other plan presents itself for you, I believe, than 
to spend the next year at home in theological study. 
I can easily point out work enough for you in that 
way, and perhaps I should make the attempt, in my 
busy, broken days, to pursue some investigations, 
including Hebrew, with you. You will, I have no 
doubt, be ready to act for me, if occasion requires, and 
to identify yourself with the best aims we are capable 
of following in the house and in the Church. 

The Rev. Dan Huntington passed away, in the full- 
ness of age, in October, 1864. Writing to him just 
before, on his ninetieth birthday, his son said : " I wish 
we could all join together in a service of family thanks- 
giving to the God and Father who is the Refuge of 
all generations. But we can all render up our several 
offerings of gratitude to our Preserver and Deliverer. 
This is one of the duties you have taught your children, 
by precept and example. I hope that both your memo- 
ries and hopes on this occasion will be pleasant and 
cheerful, as they almost always are. The Gospel gives 
you strong promises that in the time of old age you will 
not be forsaken." 

To his son, m Minnesota, Dr. Huntington wrote: 
"Everything about your good old grandfather's death 



234 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

was peaceful and happy as his life had been. His 
last articulate words were those of the Apostolical 
Benediction with a fitting 'Amen.' This was Sunday 
evening, the last day of his life and ministry on earth; 
the next morning, at four o'clock, the mysterious wheels 
of mortal animation stood still. The sacred illusion 
of his illness was that every day was Sunday. When we 
buried him it was near sunset, the air was still, and the 
splendor of a brilliant autumnal sky poured itself 
into his open grave, as was meet for the end of a course 
so genial and so beneficent as his." 

On December 22, 1864, the customary greeting was 
sent to the old homestead, this time to the sister alone, 
who remained there after her long and devoted 
attendance on their father. 

" I wish you could be at our Christmas Eve service 
in the Church, and at the Christmas Communion. 
Everything is good that unites more closely the family 
in Heaven with the family on earth, and both with 
the living and loving and glorious Head, who came to 
be one of us, and die for all." 

The ancestral mansion had now passed into the 
possession of the youngest of the family, through 
purchase from his brothers and sisters. One of the 
many generous acts which testified to the affection of 
the parishioners at Emmanuel Church for their pastor 
was a gift from a number of its prominent men to 
complete the payments on the estate. Henceforth the 
care and management of the farm in all its details 
was Dr. Huntington's pastime and delight. The 
months of summer residence there undoubtedly 
lengthened the life of the hard-working priest and 
prelate. The home was one of abounding hospitality, 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 235 

maintained with patriarchal dignity and the simple 
habits of Puritan inheritance. While the head of the 
household passed hours during the days and evenings 
of the vacation at his desk, engaged in literary work, 
or in directing parish and diocesan affairs through 
correspondence, he found leisure for long drives with 
his family and guests, exploring every road and byway 
through the valley and across the hills. In the haying 
season he did the work of one able-bodied laborer in 
the field, entering into the occupation with a zest and 
ardor which never abated. From his study-table at 
the end of the hall he had always in sight the move- 
ments in the barn and the large yard. Many a morning 
he was busy with his writing at the early hour when the 
cows went out to pasture. To the north his window 
looked into the old garden, and the changing pageant 
of earth and sky, the fruits and blossoms, the flower- 
bordered walk, the butterflies and the birds, offered a 
scene of quiet repose which was always grateful. He 
never wearied of drawing the attention of guests to his 
beautiful display of hollyhocks at midsummer. Here 
at tw T ilight he sat with his book occupied in reading 
and meditation, or he would join his wife and children 
on the lawn in front of the porch, his dog at his feet, 
while he entered into the conversation or shared with 
the group around him some subject with which his 
mind was engaged. Sometimes he would stroll away 
into the woods or to the edge of the pasture to make 
friends with his Alderney heifers. After supper, on a 
beautiful evening, all would gather on the quaint 
" stoop," along the length of the house in the rear, to 
enjoy the gorgeous tints of sunset across the river, to 
listen to the sounds dying out in the village street 



236 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

beyond its banks, to watch the purple glow fading into 
darkness on the mountain ranges and the first star 
twinkling in the heavens. After the lamps were lighted 
came the letters and newspapers, a little reading aloud, 
and an early bedtime. 

In the summer of 1860 the Hadley host wrote to a 
friend: "Our time here is spent principally out-of- 
doors. We ride a great deal, and when we get up on 
to the high grounds, into mountain scenery, I assist 
the children's anticipations of next month by telling 
them how that is like Berkshire. The beauty of the 
valley is indeed very different from the majesty of 
your grand elevations; but I cannot allow that there 
is anything in this world more lovely, more perfect, — 
in its kind, — than this beloved old homestead where I 
was born ; with the windings of the river, — the ' green 
meadows and still waters ' of an earthly Paradise, — 
the flowing outlines of the distant Western hills, — 
the splendid urn-shaped and sheaf-shaped elms around 
us and over us, — the woods, not far off, at the East, — 
with large grassy yards and hay-fields on every side. 
It is doubly delicious just now, after a Sunday's visit 
to Boston in this intensely sultry weather." 

It was in such healthful and simple employment 
of the holidays that the busy pastor stored up strength 
for the multiplied engagements of the winter months. 
In September he was again in the pulpit at Emmanuel, 
and from then to succeeding June not a Sunday passed 
without arduous work. Added to the two services in 
his own church and the third devoted to missionary 
engagements, or to some special call, the rector never 
failed to be present in his Sunday-school, making him- 
self personally acquainted with the children, catechising 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 237 

and instructing them. One of the strongest influences 
for good which those who were young women at that 
time ever afterwards recalled with gratitude was the 
Sunday Bible class, taught by Mrs. William It. Law- 
rence, to which the rector gave his earnest sympathy, 
and frequently the encouragement of his presence. 

This was only one instance of the personal solicitude 
he felt for the members of his large parish, watching 
over their spiritual life, visiting them regularly, be- 
coming acquainted with the interests of people in all 
walks of life. The following letter was written to a 
student at Harvard just before his confirmation. The 
young man was the son of a valued parishioner, and in 
later life became conspicuous for his noble influence 
and active Christian work. After his death his old 
rector wrote (in 1900), " The service he rendered by his 
character, testimony, and bestowments to the Church 
cannot be taken away or forgotten.'' 

Boston, April 4, '62. 
To J. D. W. F. 

My dear Friend: — Since hearing from you the 
good news of your intention to come openly into the 
Fold of Christ, I have thought much about you, and 
have wanted to tell you again how heartily I rejoice 
in your decision. You may be sure it is right; for you 
are following the plain direction of your Saviour. It 
is He that has put this purpose into your heart. You 
must depend entirely on Him to carry it into effect, 
in a true, consistent Christian life. You are now a 
Soldier of the Cross ; a great and noble work is given 
you to do; but you will also have great helps and en- 
couragements in doing it; and so you are never to be 



238 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

disheartened. If you sometimes fail, let that only nerve 
you to new diligence. Religion never appears with 
more grace or power, than in the character of a young 
man; and especially, perhaps, of young men in col- 
lege. I think they sometimes make the mistake of 
supposing they shall recommend their religion, and 
make it acceptable, by keeping it in the background. 
But almost everybody, even worldly and careless 
people, have a secret respect for Christians who thor- 
oughly carry out their principles, show their colors, 
and stand by their Master. 

Your success will depend chiefly on your private 
devotions. Keep some time sacred every day for these. 
Find out when you can best manage to be alone and let 
nothing interfere with your retirement for reading the 
Bible, and prayer. 

Some of the most quiet Christians in the world have 
been the firmest. Let your acquaintances see that while 
you make no noise about your piety, your principles 
are fixed, your course is deliberately chosen, and your 
spirit clad in the whole armor of God. 

I trust the Sunday evening will be to you, to many 
more, the beginning of many happy years of Christian 
progress and peace, and that you will always look 
back to that scene with a grateful memory. 
I am most truly and faithfully, 

F. D. Huntington. 

Hadley, July 10, 1862. 

To A. W. S. C. 

In the retirement and leisure of these still days, in 
this still place, my thoughts go out after one and 
another of the dear young believers that have con- 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 239 

fessed their faith in Emmanuel Church; and they 
turn to none oftener than to you. Life, at the longest, 
is so short; our powers, at best, are so poor; the souls 
for which our Master has died have such inestimable 
value; and "the world" presses so hard upon the 
aspirations of our higher hours, — that I can hardly 
consent to let the service which Christ has entrusted 
to me in his Church wholly cease even in these days 
of summer rest. I long, at least, that the impressions 
of our holy seasons in the months past should not be 
lost while we are scattered apart, and are set free for 
recreation and pleasure. I don't know how you find it; 
but, for myself, I think it always needs a little more 
than the usual watchfulness and self-control to keep 
the hidden life of faith and holiness up to the right 
standard, during these periods of pleasure and play, 
more than when the various helps and supports of 
our regular winter habits are about us. The times of 
daily devotion are apt to be interrupted in one way 
or another; the order of our private religious exercises 
falls apart; the spirits are excited and borne away 
with the round of social gaieties; and so the spiritual 
tone is sometimes relaxed or lowered. Others, how- 
ever, — and perhaps you may be among them, — are 
greatly aided by this change from city to country. 
They feel nearer God amidst the simplicity, the 
grandeur, and solemn beauty of his hills and forests 
and open sky, than under the dust and noise where 
multitudes jostle against each other. The difference 
is owing, probably, in part to temperament, and in 
part to the peculiar circumstances of each individual. 
The true way is to look at every change as having 
something to do with our religious training and dis- 



240 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

cipline. The God of both winter and summer makes 
everything beautiful in its own season; and it is only 
we, in our willfulness, or selfishness, or negligence, 
who turn his appointments into snares and tempta- 
tions. But what a blessing that promise is, that he 
will not suffer us to be tempted " above that we are 
able," but will, with the temptation, if we are only 
faithful, make a way of escape. I dare say you are 
often dissatisfied with yourself. All earnest Christians 
are. You do not seem, perhaps, to be making the ad- 
vances you have desired. Almost three months have 
gone since that sacred Confirmation evening; and it 
may be that you do not see in yourself much growth 
in purity and in likeness to Jesus. But take heart, and 
do not be discouraged if it is so. While you trust the 
strength of God's promises, guard your actions, and 
their inward springs. Be always seeking out some 
opportunity of ministering good to the other members 
of the family. The scene of your self-denial may be 
familiar and tame, and your best efforts may not 
always appear to be appreciated. But your Saviour 
sees them, every one, and remembers them; and it is 
thro' just these little trials that your spirit is to be 
"endued with power from on high," and matured 
into a noble Christian womanhood. . . . 

It occurs to me that you may have known nothing, 
or but little, of the movement in which our Emmanuel 
people are now so generally and .deeply interested, — 
the building or buying of a Mission Chapel for our 
work in the ninth ward. And as I have lying by me an 
unused copy of the sermon with which I initiated the 
measure, I will enclose it for you and your mother 
instead of writing out a description of the plan here. 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 241 

My whole heart is in this enterprise for the neglected 
Pagans close by us in Boston. I have been laboring 
incessantly for it ever since I saw you in P. (this ser- 
mon was preached the very Sunday after), and I have 
had the satisfaction of seeing even those that were 
coolest at first becoming engaged in the project. You 
will not forget to entreat the Head of the Church to 
prosper it. He has done so already; for we have about 
eight thousand dollars subscribed, in these hard times. 

On Sunday afternoons it was often Dr. Huntington's 
habit to minister at one of the hospitals, occasionally 
at the House of the Good Samaritan, in w r hich he was 
much interested, and quite regularly, for some months 
each season, at the Home for Consumptives, then 
just opened and enlisting his strong support. Its 
founder, Dr. Charles Cullis, was a parishioner, and 
the earliest plans for the work were submitted to his 
pastor for counsel. His simple faith and spiritual 
character endeared him very much to Dr. Huntington, 
who endorsed and aided his work. Among other new 
objects of charity to which the busy minister gave time 
and assistance was the Dedham Home for Discharged 
Female Prisoners, which he frequently visited. 

Holding a firm belief that almsgiving should be sys- 
tematic and intelligent, he employed a parish visitor, 
under his ow T n oversight, who was largely engaged in 
befriending such as personally applied to him. With 
most of those who came to the door seeking relief, an 
occurrence more frequent in the days before the estab- 
lishment of organized charities, he spoke himself; and 
in his busy hours some unfortunate was pretty sure 
to be seen sitting in the hall waiting for an interview. 



242 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Practical measures for the improvement of the condi- 
tions connected with poverty occupied his mind, and 
he was much concerned for the better housing of 
families of the Mission congregation who inhabited 
damp and unwholesome tenements in an ill-drained 
district. The establishment of the Rector's Aid 
Society, a body of earnest young men, resulted in 
the erection of Huntington House, completed and 
named for its founder, after his removal from Boston. 
It was through this same organization that in April, 
1866, Dr. Huntington's strong desire to have under his 
control a church building free to all worshipers of 
Almighty God, became realized in the consecration of 
the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. It was distinctively 
stated from the beginning that this sanctuary was 
not intended for a single class, but as a place where 
rich and poor should meet together. The name ex- 
pressed the teaching connected with it, that those who 
entered the doors and attended the services "should 
constitute a special flock, on equal terms with each other 
before the Saviour of souls ; that their ways should be 
kindly and that the Ministry should serve them cheer- 
fully." 

Near the end of his life, October, 1899, Bishop 
Huntington wrote, on the occasion of its twenty-fifth 
anniversary, to the rector, Rev. George Prescott, this 
retrospect of the Church of the Good Shepherd: — 

You know, in part at least, how dear and precious 
it was to me from the hour of its birth as a mission, 
during all my ministry in Emmanuel. Indeed, I should 
never have been satisfied to be the pastor of a con- 
gregation made up largely of families of wealth and 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 243 

leisure, without the balance of a flock of a less favored 
class, wherein I and my parishioners could expend 
our sympathies and un bo light labors. Therefore, just 
as soon as the Parish was organized, I struck off into 
the comparatively unshepherded population in and 
about Church Street, and the district east and south. 
The first "Chapel" was a rude upstairs section of a 
carpenter's shop, partitioned off with pine boards. 
There we gathered a Sunday-school, and sang and 
prayed. From there, in due time, we removed to 
Nassau Hall, on Washington Street, between Common 
Street and Hollis, where w T e had services, sacraments, 
preaching, and where the benevolent women and girls 
of Emmanuel administered their charities, and where 
some of the noblest, best bred, most refined and effi- 
cient daughters of Boston had their training in the 
manifold departments of church work, for which 
Boston and other parts of the world have been better 
ever since. How that scene of practical Christian 
activity was afterwards transferred to Cortes Street, 
and by what successive and honorable steps in indus- 
trial and spiritual enterprise advanced to its later and 
well-known distinction, you will not need that I should 
call to mind. I wish that I had time to pay the deserved 
tribute of my esteem and gratitude to the true and 
devoted pastors — shepherds, indeed — w 7 ho were 
with me and came afterwards, and especially to the 
present admirable successor, whose wise administration, 
unwearied toil, patient sacrifices, and lovely disposition 
need no praise from me. God bless him, his home, and 
all his people! 

Faithfully, 

F. D. Huntington. 



244 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Another recollection of those days comes from the 
first assistant minister. 

" How can I begin to do justice to that morning of 
bright hopes, that epoch of quickened faith, glad 
sympathies and high endeavor ? The people who ral- 
lied around Huntington, helped him to found this 
Church, and gave, not only their money, but themselves 
to the task of edifying the body of Christ, were a 
choice company. They loved their leader, they be- 
lieved in him, and unfamiliar though he was with 
the ways to which most of them had been accustomed 
from their childhood, they felt no shadow of a doubt 
that, out of the very novelty of the conditions by which 
he found himself environed, there w T ould come a 
stimulus that should make him more effective even 
than before. Nor were they disappointed in the event. 

"How eagerly we listened to the sermons; how 
earnestly we talked among ourselves of the rector's 
rapidly unfolding plans; how impatient we were to 
escape from our temporary place of worship, on the 
other side of the town, and to enter upon occupancy 
here, where the new Boston was taking form." ! 

In a sermon preached at the end of the first year of 
parish life their rector had told his flock: "My view 
of the work of this Church is very simple. It is that 
every person in the congregation, of either sex, of all 
conditions, and of every age, if not disabled by severe 
disease, ought to have some kind of service in hand 
to be done as circumstances allow, in virtue of being 
a member of that congregation, under the direction of 
the rector, and in the name of Christ, who is the ever 

1 Memorial Sermon: "A Good Shepherd," Rev. William R. 
Huntington, D.D. 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 245 

present Head of all under-shepherds and of the whole 
flock." This was no passing admonition, left to chance 
to take practical effect, but a programme laid down 
as strictly for himself, by the leader, as for those under 
his spiritual care. It was his untiring business from 
week's end to week's end to watch over and to encour- 
age the various departments of service in the parish, 
and to enlist personally in these ministrations every 
person who occupied a seat on Sunday. One who was 
at that time a young girl recalls how promptly on her 
return home from boarding-school a little note came 
from the rector, assuming as a matter of course that 
she would engage in some line of usefulness, and sug- 
gesting where her efforts would be of most benefit to 
herself and to others. The Mission field was a large 
outlet for sympathy and cooperation. Among the 
visitors enrolled to go into the homes of distress and 
want, one finds printed in those old reports names still 
remembered in the community for influence and high 
position. 

Although the rector took the initiative in the building 
of the Mission chapel, the wardens and vestry assumed 
themselves the work of parish enlargement, and 
there was no stint in funds for the prosecution of all 
branches of parochial activity. In 1864 a chapel was 
erected adjoining the church to provide for lenten 
services and for the Sunday-school, and the following 
year a transept was added on the west, giving two 
hundred additional sittings. 

When, many years later, a fine ecclesiastical structure 
was erected in Lynn by one of the noble churchmen 
of Massachusetts, the donor said that it was his old 
rector at Emmanuel who "first taught him how to 

i 



246 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

give." The liberality of this layman, as of others who 
sat under that preaching, was indeed the result of 
Christian principle, which regards the acquisition of 
wealth as the enlargement of sacred obligations. 
Those who occupied the heads of the pews half a cen- 
tury ago, were the solid business men of the common- 
wealth who, beside managing their affairs with sa- 
gacity and prudence, practiced habits of life which 
knew nothing of ostentation. Others in that large 
audience w T ere students, lawyers, judges, men influ- 
ential in counsel, wide in their sympathies, conserva- 
tive in their tastes, deliberate in their judgments. 
Among the larger interests w r hich their pastor pre- 
sented to them with earnestness was that of clerical 
education, and generous offerings were made to the 
" Society for the Increase of the Ministry." In a letter 
to his son George, who was preparing to enter Berkeley 
Divinity School, Dr. Huntington expresses his strong 
desire to see a similar institution planted in the vicinity 
of Harvard. It was therefore in a spirit of hearty con- 
gratulation that he announced to his congregation one 
Sunday morning the munificent gift made by one of 
their number, Benjamin Tyler Reed, for the founding 
of the Theological School at Cambridge. He became 
a visitor of the seminary, was a trustee of Trinity Col- 
lege, of Vassar College, and of St. Paul's School, 
Concord, and still further manifested his strong inter- 
est in education as one of the founders of St. Mark's 
School for boys, Southboro. 

It seems in place here to give some reminiscences 
of the rector of Emmanuel, written by one who was in 
his youth an active worker: "He was particularly 
kind and watchful to young men who were away from 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 247 

their homes, and in Boston, either as students or in 
business. Dr. Huntington was the great preacher of 
Boston in those days. He ever seemed to endeavor 
to impress upon his hearers that it was a very solemn 
thing to live, that the responsibility was great, and 
duty to God and man must be done no matter what 
happened. His sermons were always deeply thought 
out, expressed in choice, often magnificent, English 
of good length, but never too long, the words distinct, 
his voice and accent fascinating, his manner serious, 
stately, dignified, yet at the same time humble rather 
than pompous. 

" I recall to mind his interest in the church Reading 
room. The young men desired to have a room cen- 
trally located where the church publications could be 
found, and where the Boston churchmen could meet 
for conversation during the evenings, the clergy could 
find a mutual meeting-place, and where the services 
and special church occasions could be bulletined. The 
Doctor was our most interested supporter, and his 
influence was a great help to us. Some were afraid of 
it because it was to be distinctively churchly, and 
Bishop Eastburn had no sympathy with the enter- 
prise. The church Reading room struggled for years, 
but it lived, and the Diocesan House is the result and 
its historical continuation." 

January 1, 1865. 

To A. L. P. 

We have turned the corner in our w r inter work of 
the year. Too little room is given to old friendships, 
to quiet communion and the simple genial enjoyment 
of the hearts we love, in this eager, noisy, human life. 



248 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

We are in the midst of winter work — the Mission and 
its charities, which take a great deal of time. We get 
better and better organized every year. I wish you 
could have been with us at our Christmas festivity and 
that you could see the Church in its evergreen dress. 
You cannot conceive the change that has come over 
our Community in its observance of this Festival within 
twenty or thirty years. I can remember when not a 
sprig of green or a public service marked the day, 
except with a few scattered Church families. Now, 
scarcely a house is without its celebration. But there 
is a great deal to be learned yet. 

Dec. 31, 1866. 
To his Sister. 

That date I have written, I suppose, for the last 
time. It is the last night and almost the last hour of 
the year. I have been writing letters not only to various 
parts of this country, but to England, to France, to 
Africa, to China, and now the last word shall go to 
you, my faithful, true-hearted, loved, revered, only 
sister. 

We are growing old. The other day Hannah and I 
got our first eye-glasses. Luckily they are just alike, so 
that if they change places it will not discomfort us. 
We ought not to mourn the flight of time if we believe 
that this life is the antechamber and beginning of Life 
Eternal. 

Old Madam Hooper is gone, the oldest, most ven- 
erable and lovely " Mother in Israel " of my Parish. 
Her death was entirely beautiful. She liked to have me 
tell her about father. As it was just before Christmas, 
I took the text of Simeon and Anna and preached a 



THE PASTOR AND HIS FLOCK 249 

sermon on Christian Old Age. But the better sermon 
was her life. 

Christmas was bright and cheery, with its great 
Memory, its animating worship, its noble music, its 
Holy Communion, and its family pleasures. How 
impressive it is to think of all the millions of deeds of 
kindness, plans, and schemes, and surprises of disin- 
terested good-will and generosity all over the world- 
wide Christendom, and all springing from the act of 
love 1800 years ago. To-morrow morning at nine 
o'clock we begin the New Year with a service and the 
Holy Communion. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE KING S MESSENGER 



" You did well to talk so plainly as you did. 
There is little of this faithful dealing with men now-a-days." 

It should be borne in mind, that during the years of 
planting and growth in Emmanuel parish, while its 
life was becoming more vigorous, its activities more 
varied and effective, the community and the nation 
were passing under the clouds of civil strife, of blood- 
shed, apprehension, and financial insecurity. The 
lessons to be learned through public events were 
pronounced from the pulpit with the clear utterance 
of the prophets of old. On Sept. 14, 1862, Dr. Hunt- 
ington preached a sermon, afterwards reprinted as a 
special contribution to the " Christian Witness," from 
the passage in II Chronicles xx. 12. 

" O our God, . . . we have no might against this 
great company that cometh against us; neither know 
we what to do : but our eyes are upon thee." He 
introduced the subject by referring to a discourse " in 
which less than two years ago we took this language as 
text for the general doctrine of God's providence, 
giving it a figurative application to the anxieties and 
perplexities of our individual and common life. Few 
minds could believe then that within twenty months 
the words would come to have a literal meaning for us 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 251 

as a nation, in the battles, the invasions, the abused 
patience of a peaceful government, the multitude of 
confederate assailants, the heathenish cruelties, the 
mortal agonies, of these alienated and armed States. 

"This morning, only change the names of persons 
and places, and the whole passage sounds as if it were 
written of our own people, with weapons in their 
hands, with the visions of streams of blood before their 
eyes, with supplication on their lips, and with some- 
thing fearfully like dismay in their hearts." The com- 
plete sermon is a powerful plea, as the title indicates, for 
" A Nation's Look toward God," beginning by pointing 
out strong and vivid analogies with Old Testament 
history. " God binds men together, organizes them, and 
trains them up through the mutual affections, sacri- 
fices, and services of corporate Institutions: first the 
Family, secondly the State, thirdly the Church. The 
Church is both Family and State, a divine Family, 
a divine State ; visible and historical as well as spiritual 
and perpetual. Hence the national character is a holy 
thing. When it is prostrated and polluted it is the most 
terrible of degradations. A people without religious 
patriotism is a mob of weak and one-sided insurgents, 
held together, if at all, only by interest and fear. . . . 

"The philosophy of sheer individualism is an 
unchristian philosophy. It lacks the purest, the loftiest, 
the most unselfish aspirations of humanity. Christ 
comes, not only to make righteous individuals, but to 
build a righteous kingdom, whereof each individual 
is a member, so that no one can say to another, I have 
no need of thee. Open the Scriptures almost anywhere 
and you will find that God's people loved their nation, 
prayed for it, lived for it, died for it, as a divine thing." 



252 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

In closing, the preacher reminded his audience of 
the character of its noble heritage and the public 
iniquities which had led to adversity and anguish. " We 
have trusted to our enterprise, our trade, and our 
wealth; and now a debt of a thousand millions or 
more is to impoverish us. We have bought and sold 
votes with money and for party; and now we are 
learning, by lessons burnt into our hearts, what law 
and government are really worth, and what they cost. 
We have professed liberty, but beyond all the obliga- 
tions of the Constitution, have been willing that our 
fellow men should suffer the wrongs of slaver} 7 ; and 
now our brothers are captives and prisoners, while 
slavery is at the bottom of the whole boiling cauldron 
of our troubles. The scourge is upon us, are we hum- 
bled by it ? We are under the rod, do we acknowledge 
who holds it ? We recruit the ranks with bounties in 
money, which may be well, as a proof of the willingness 
of those that offer them; but is an army so recruited 
like one that moves to battle only for justice and truth ? 
The air is full of criticisms upon this or that com- 
mander — crude, impatient, self -glorying, or partisan 
speculation ! But how many of our people go into the 
closet, and there, on their knees cry, with the Hebrew 
captain, in the humility of a self -forgetful faith, ' Our 
eyes are upon thee ' ? " 

On Nov. 17, of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, the 
rector, in a discourse on "The Chastened Feast," took 
for his text the verse of the Psalms, " Rejoice with trem- 
bling," and struck a note of gratitude for mercies, in the 
midst of discipline, rather than of warning and admo- 
nition. He dwelt, appropriately to the occasion, upon 
the fact that of the three terrible dealings of God with 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 253 

man, two — famine and pestilence — had been averted; 
dwelling, however, not alone upon the material causes 
for thankfulness, but upon assurance in the divine 
promises. 

On the fourth of March, 1863, Dr. Huntington 
wrote to his sister: " The date reminds us naturally that 
just one half of President Lincoln's term of office has 
expired. What a troubled and fearful administration! 
And how anxiously we must look forward to the 
remaining half! At the close of it shall we be a dis- 
membered country, with local strifes and bitter jeal- 
ousies, or one people again ? Will the curse of slavery 
be removed from the land forever; or will it have an 
empire of its own, founded on the horrid principle of 
legalized oppression ? It is not easy to believe the latter. 
One of my parishioners lately said to President Lin- 
coln, in Washington, 'I remember seeing you, Sir, 
when you were president of a railroad company in 
Illinois.' 'Ah, yes,' was the characteristic reply: 'and 
if I were President of the railroad company now, 
instead of being President of the United States, I guess 
I should sleep better o' nights.' 

" Our mother, I believe, was equally a lover of peace 
and of liberty; equally disapproving war and slavery. 
How strangely the two ideas have come into conflict 
with each other! But God is a God of both peace and 
liberty, and He can guide the storm. We are in the midst 
of Lent services. The frequent worship is delightful." 

In April, 1863, the leading article in the "Church 
Monthly" was from Dr. Huntington, on the subject, 
"Loyalty and Love," a reconciliation between the 
two conflicting conditions of peace and war. It was 
possibly somewhat out of character that one who had 



254 • FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

been brought up as a believer in the establishment of 
universal concord, and who had been an advocate of 
the Peace Society, should defend the maintenance 
of any cause through military force. But the spirit 
of the times stirred even those far less ardent in tem- 
perament to sympathy with the passage of armies, the 
rejoicing in victory, "the tumult and the shoutings" 
consequent upon victorious conflict. The writer ably 
sustained the moral strength of the principles involved, 
and their nobler aspect. He quoted from an eminent 
statesman, who said, after extensive travel through the 
country; "I have nowhere found any feeling of exas- 
peration against the people of the South, but in every 
point a solemn determination to uphold the govern- 
ment, at the same time with a sadness and a depth of 
tenderness I will in vain endeavor to describe. This is 
not a war upon the people of the South, but a war 
undertaken for their defense and for their deliverance." 
After a picture of what true Christian soldiership 
might be, the article continues: " Light is given us in 
this line of thought to see how it is, and to see that it 
is just as faith ought to have expected, that the high 
and mighty Ruler of the Universe, who is the only giver 
of all victory, carefully keeps the issues in His own 
hands. His are the sicknesses that waste, the drought 
that famishes, the tempests that wreck, the winds that 
hinder or speed fleets, and the rains that swell rivers, 
and the frosts that chill in one place and destroy 
miasma in another; and He means to make it manifest, 
doubtless, before the eyes of mankind, that by Him 
nations are ruled, squadrons turned, and wars made 
to cease. Numbers, armaments, drills, revenues, experi- 
ence, courage, strategy — these are the instruments of 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 255 

war; but the Almighty must accept and bless them 
before they prosper. He blows upon them with His 
indignation, and they are like the chaff of the summer 
threshing-floor which the wind driveth away. May He 
grant that as defeat and loss school us into energy and 
order and humble dependence upon Him, so every 
success may lift hearty anthems to His praise ! " 

On the national Fast Day, that same month, April, 
1863, another exposition from Hebrew history was 
delivered to the flock at Emmanuel, from the text, 
" Hear now, O house of Israel : Is not my w r ay equal ? 
are not your ways unequal ? " Ezekiel xviii. 25. 

u An exile w r ith his exiled fellow-countrymen, sitting 
by the mournful river Chebar, on 'the hill of grief,' 
the faithful Ezekiel, himself a splendid example of 
patriotic loyalty, inflexible in his integrity, unflinching 
in his faith, summons the guilty Israelites to an august 
reckoning of their sins, in Jehovah's name. ' Hear now, 
O house of Israel : ' O house of America ! ' Is not my 
way equal ? are not your ways unequal ? ' ' 

It was a time when distrust and discouragement 
began to be more openly expressed through the pro- 
longed continuance of the struggle. "Divided coun- 
sels, party passions and corruptions, weak defenses 
and fruitless campaigns, delay, and the new levies, 
and the fresh millions of appropriations," were bringing 
to light " the moral falsehoods which kill the Nation's 
true life more effectually than sword or shot or all the 
diseases of the hospital and camp." The lessons to 
be gained from the "long and severe tuition" were 
obedience to the voice of God, patience, Christian 
endurance, solid adherence and loyalty to a fixed prin- 
ciple, through all disasters, defeats, and delays. 



256 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

"Stubborn resistance and exhausting sieges where 
we looked for easy victories; massive fortifications of 
rivers and seaports and inland capitals, where we pre- 
dicted open and exposed approaches ; thousands found 
in arms where only hundreds were expected ; combina- 
tion and determination, and promptitude, and energy, 
and perseverance opposed to us, where we told each 
other we should encounter only laxity, and weak- 
ness, and confusion, and vacillation; treachery and 
division and incompetency discovered on our own 
side, where we flattered ourselves there would be no- 
thing but honor and unity and signal ability to com- 
mand and to prevail. This is God's method of saying 
to us, in the stern and instructive language of facts, 
Are you in earnest ? Do you believe as you profess ? 
Is your faith only in yourselves, or in the Lord, Eternal 
and Holy, as your Nation's God ? They are God's 
'equal' and righteous way in the war, purging and 
correcting us for our * unequal' ways before it came." 

On the fourth Sunday after Easter, April 24, 1864, 
a sermon was delivered and afterward printed by 
request of the wardens and vestry, which was entitled, 
"Personal Humiliation demanded by the National 
Danger." This was no hopeful summoning of multi- 
tudes to battle for the right; no kindling assurance of 
the marks of Divine favor in time of tribulation; no 
softening of chastisement by lessons of humble sub- 
mission and faith. In the powerful language of a 
prophet was depicted the widespread apprehension 
of impending public disaster which possessed serious 
minds. 

"After an interval of comparative quiet we seem to 
be approaching one of those critical and fearful turns 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 257 

of campaign and battle where the vast fortunes and 
interests of a kingdom have often been gathered up 
for a revolution in some dreadful valley of decision. 
Long processes of planning, accumulations, trans- 
porting and concentration of forces, are about coming 
on both sides to their maturity and their trial. It 
would seem as if the people must be hushed with awe, 
as nature seems to be, before the crash of the thunder- 
gust from the full magazines of the sultry air. . . . 

" Hostile armies, numbered by hundreds of thou- 
sands of soldiers, officered by determined and exas- 
perated leaders, w T ith national life, pride, and honor 
at stake, do not meet and part without making the 
earth groan under them and far around them. If you 
leave the great moral considerations, and pass on to 
call up and prefigure the separate and particular 
shapes of terrible anguish which are to darken and 
distress the land the moment these waiting collisions 
come, these sleeping monsters of armies awake and 
uncoil, and the lightnings are loosened, — anguish on 
the battle-field, in the heat and thirsts of the sun, and 
the chill of night ; anguish in ambulances and hospitals ; 
anguish in thousands and tens of thousands of deso- 
lated homes all over these mourning States, — why, 
if w r e are creatures of sympathy or sensibility at all, 
is it not enough to restrain this eager chase for osten- 
tatious riches ? " 

Then follows, in scornful words of indignation, but 
in sorrow and in sadness, an arraignment of that state 
of society, due to the rapid rise of fortunes; "an 
inflated estimate of material things, with the absorbing 
and heated pursuit of w r ealth. What wonder if some 
whispers of discontent creep through the encamp- 



258 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

raents of the army and the cabins of the navy ? From 
the capital, through all our large cities and seats of 
commerce, out to the remotest hamlets, and from 
rulers in the highest stations to subjects in the mean- 
est, men are calculating the profits of their oppor- 
tunity. Making all allowance for benevolent allevia- 
tions of the sufferings of soldiers, these facts yet remain 
undisputed. Religious humility and that reverence 
which the Nation's God designs by His discipline, and 
demands in His Word, are not generally produced. We 
are not repentant. Vfe are not sobered. We are not on 
our knees. We are not a people bringing forth fruits 
meet for repentance." In conclusion, the better way 
pointed out through the text, "Humble yourselves 
therefore under the mighty hand of God," was plainly 
enforced; " the patriotism of the true citizen, which, by 
daily speech, by gifts, by sacrifices would strengthen 
the impending movements of the forces; with an 
increase of sympathy which binds classes more closely 
together, an abatement of outward extravagance, more 
retirement, more recollections, redoubled devotion 
to the offices of worship and charity. 

" The nature of a devout and humble mind must 
have changed very much since the Scriptures were 
written, if, in looking forward to the season of blood 
and sorrow that is before us, really good men do not 
feel it to be safer and wiser to be wherever prayer is 
wont to be made, in Church or in Chapel, on hallowed 
days or any days, than in pleasure parties, or convivial 
clubs, or an unremitted application to the world's busi- 
ness. Whatever else we do for the torn and bleeding 
country, we must pray for it. Whatever else we leave 
undone, we must urge our petitions to the God of for- 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 259 

giveness, the God of concord and unity, and the God of 
victory for it. However else we fail, we shall never 
really fail in intercessions for the right and for the 
defenders of it, for magistrates and chiefs, and for all 
the people, before Him who heareth prayer, and who 
made Israel to prevail while the commander's arms 
were lifted up in supplication." 

A few weeks later the preacher wrote to Hadley : — 

Boston, June 7, 1864. 
The world of nature is full of gracious beauty, and 
the season must be favorable to the setting and growth 
of grass. But the human world is full of mourning, 
lamentation, and woe. The battle-field and disease 
together make great havoc. 

In his own family Dr. Huntington had no losses 
during the Civil War, although nephews and other 
kinsmen served honorably in the field, and one suf- 
fered the horrors of a southern prison ; but as pastor of 
a large flock he was called upon to minister consola- 
tion to aching and bereaved hearts. Splendid young 
men, parishioners and communicants, perished in 
battle or died in the hospitals; and mourners multi- 
plied as the struggle drew to an end. Spoken and 
written words of sympathy, visits to the afflicted, last 
services to the departed, formed no small part of his 
labors as a pastor during those dark months. It was 
at such times that his rare power of sympathy, and the 
sustaining strength which his own spiritual experience 
afforded to those who came to him for counsel and 
courage, were deeply felt. Prayers, fervent and scrip- 
tural, such as in the earlier days of his ministry helped 



260 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

to lift the hearts of his congregation to the throne 
above, were poured out in private devotions with the 
sick, with the anxious and heavy-hearted who turned 
to him in trouble. Among other forms of strength and 
refreshment brought to such sorrowing souls he was 
a strong believer in what he pronounced "the high 
office of sacred poetry." In the Introduction to "Lyra 
Domestica," the title of a collection which he made 
himself, 1 he says of the early German hymn writers: 
" They abound in those clear annunciations of spiritual 
truth which a genuine experience of divine realities 
always readily recognizes as the result of a similar 
experience in another. They reach down into solemn 
depths of sorrow and up into holy heights of joy; but 
they do both with an unbroken tranquillity of spirit 
which makes us feel that the joy is chastened and the 
sorrow not comfortless." Of the concluding poems in 
this volume, from different sources, the editor says: 
' They are sublime confessions of Christ before men, 
preaching his gospel, commending his sacraments, 
calling to his baptism, celebrating his Eucharist, 
glorifying his Nativity, Easter, and Pentecost, honor- 
ing the noble army of his Martyrs, and breathing 
down the hallowed fire of their piety and prayers 
through worshiping generations." 

In a Preface to " Hymns and Meditations," by Miss 
A. L. Waring, in 1863, he expresses his own poetical 
taste and discrimination. l( The ideas of a Christian 
life which are wrought into the poetry are always both 
strong and tender, vigorous and gentle, brave and 
trustful. We find few traces of that refined religious 
selfishness on the one hand and that feeble sentimen- 
1 Lyra Domestica : with additional poems, 1866. 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 201 

talism on the other which vitiate so much of the pious 
literature, and especially the metrical pious literature 
of modern times. A state of comfortable pietistic com- 
placency is not here put instead of a self-renouncing 
submission to the perfect will of God, nor does the 
call to action ring out with less clearness and power 
because we see laid open before us the divine depths 
of a complete and serene communion with the in- 
dwelling Christ." 

Two years later poems, " fugitive and permanent, 
old and new, near and distant, open and obscure," 
were gathered together in a volume called "Elim, or 
Hymns of Holy Refreshment," w T ith this motto : " And 
they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, 
and threescore and ten palm trees, and encamped 
there." 

Dr. Muhlenberg wrote of this collection, "How 
did you get together so many beautiful hymns ? " 

Among the authors were some little known in 
America at that time. Dr. Huntington especially 
delighted in the noble verse of C. F. and of William 
Alexander. The latter, then Dean of Emly, and later 
Archbishop of Armagh, said in a letter acknowledging 
the receipt of "Elim:" — 

"I am glad that my wife and I occupy a niche in 
your volume, and hope that we may be liked by our 
cousins over the sea. My wife has written much, and 
she has won her way to a real position, I think, among 
living poets. I have written but little, scattered, vaga- 
bond, unfinished pieces. I was at Oxford, where I have 
obtained poetical prizes. The muses demand a life; 
and I have only had half hours to give them." That 
Mrs. Alexander's claim to recognition Was genuine is 



262 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

proved by the fact that in our present " Church 
Hymnal" there are no less than twelve hymns of her 
composition. 

Notwithstanding his strong love of poetry, a taste 
which belonged more to his own generation than to 
the present, Frederic Huntington gave little to the 
world. He wrote, while a Unitarian preacher, some 
hymns for special occasions, with "A Supplication," 
of twelve or more stanzas, expressing deep spiritual 
communing; and a few touching lines in old age. The 
following estimate is both true and appreciative : — 

"Though he lived almost an ascetic life, so far as 
personal indulgence went, his sense of the beautiful, 
whether in nature or in art, was of the keenest. Es- 
pecially was his critical judgment of value in matters 
of style. Perhaps no American writer ever had so full 
a command of devotional English as he. His hold 
upon the adjectival resources of the language rivaled 
Jeremy Taylor's. His imagination played around a 
sacred subject like a flame, lighting up whole territories 
of contiguous truth. Save for a few hymns written in 
early life, he adventured little in the way of original 
verse, but there was no lack in him of the vision 
and the faculty divine, the soul of the poet shone ever 
through the mantle of the prophet and through the 
fair linen of the priest. 

" Of the collections of religious poetry which he 
edited, none, I think, was so markedly illustrative of 
his personality as the volume entitled ' Elim, or Hymns 
of Holy Refreshment.' Nowhere else does the la rue 
catholicity of his spiritual nature, his ability to sympa- 
thize, alike with the catholic and with the individual- 
istic conception of Christian truth, more distinctly 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 263 

reveal itself. There is a mysticism that is sacramental, 
and there is a mysticism that is non-sacramental, — 
nay, almost anti-sacramental, — Huntington did justice 
to both. Probably he would have made but an indif- 
ferent professor of systematic divinity, but that is 
because he was so well versed in the divinity which 
outlives all the systems, the simple divinity which 
finds centre and pivot in the person of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." * 

It has been already remarked that there was 
hardly any time when the earnest preacher did not 
express himself from the editorial chair as well as 
from the pulpit. In 1861 he took charge of the " Church 
Monthly, " in conjunction with Dr. George M. Randall, 
in the interest of the extension of the Church in Massa- 
chusetts. In order to bring the principles of the faith,* 
its doctrines, and historical defenses within the reach 
of the uninstructed, the use of a column was obtained 
in a daily newspaper, the "Boston Traveller." The 
introductory letter, signed F. D. Huntington, explicitly 
set forth that it was not intended for controversy, 
partisan strife, or personalities. "We shall not conceal 
our purpose to recommend, so far as we fairly can, the 
scriptural standards, orderly ways, primitive discipline, 
and catholic spirit of this apostolic communion, be- 
lieving as we heartily do that no greater blessing can 
be offered to our fellow men, to their families and their 
children." When the articles closed, at the end of the 
year 1865, after nearly the whole round of the Chris- 
tian year, it was stated that, " We have been able to 
continue much longer than we had any reason to 

1 Memorial Sermon : "A Good Shepherd," Rev. William R. Hunt- 
ington, D. D. 



264 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

expect would be possible. For the most part the Chris- 
tian bodies around us in this country, under a benign 
and patient Providence, are working out their experi- 
ments with religious sincerity. We are more than 
content that the truths of our fold have a fair and equal 
opportunity for development among them. We have 
no right to demand recognition for them except as they 
furnish a superior and scriptural power in the great 
conflict of the age, between faith and an unbelieving 
self-will; except as they tend to mould the characters, 
manners, homes, and social institutions of men into 
righteous, noble, and reverential forms; except as 
they offer Christianity to the understanding and 
affections of the people as a commanding, genial, and 
beautiful reality : — even the power of God and the 
•wisdom of God unto their salvation." 

Another branch of church teaching through the 
press was the publication of a number of tracts on 
different subjects. One of these was delivered in the 
series of " Price Lectures," * The Roman Catholic 
Principle." "Two Ways in Religion" contrasted " in 
a most admirable manner, and without offensive epi- 
thets or accusations, the Unitarian and Trinitarian 
systems." An address before the Diocesan Board of 
Missions claims " Massachusetts as a Field for Church 
Missions." The principle of the tithe is treated in the 
pamphlet entitled " Systematic Offerings for Christ," a 
presentation of the Christian duty to lay aside each 
week a fixed sum for the support of the Lord's house 
and the extension of Christ's Kingdom, which might 
well be taken to heart by thousands of careless or unin- 
structed communicants at the present day. Among 
other published addresses was " A Plea for an Open 



THE KINGS MESSENGER M5 

Church," which resulted in an organization to pro- 
mote the establishment of free churches, at a period 
when to sell pews or rent sittings was a fixed custom 
with the wardens and vestries of a parish. 

Rt. Rev. Carlton Chase, Bishop of New Hampshire, 
wrote to him, June 13, 1863 : " It is a beautiful quality 
of your mind that you see every nail's head — and if it 
needs striking, you strike it — and you miss it not. I 
have seen two or three of your things lately, which I 
admired exceedingly. Nobody surpasses you in the 
analysis of character and truth. At brushing away 
mists you have a wonderful skill. I have often recom- 
mended ' The Rock of Ages ' to persons who I thought 
would admire the beautiful preface, if they did not 
yield to the force of the book. 

" May you live long, my dear brother, to bless the 
Church and the world with the precious fruits of your 
studies. I do not see how you find time to prepare for 
so many special calls." 

One of the most important treatises published by 
Dr. Huntington, after he left the Unitarian body and 
became a priest of the Church, was the Introduction 
to an American edition of an English theological pub- 
lication : " The Rock of Ages, or Scripture Testimony 
to the One Eternal Godhead, " by Rev. Edward Henry 
Bickersteth. It is impossible in so short a space to 
give sufficient extracts from what was in fact Dr. 
Huntington's last word on the subject of his change 
of belief, to those who had assailed him for it. The 
whole argument w T hich he thus commends, is an appeal 
to "the one Book," the texts classified and carefully 
collated, so as to present the weight of evidence as sim- 
ply and directly as possible. The fact that its author 



266 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

passed from under the cloud of intellectual doubt into 
the acceptance of Catholic truth through the devout 
study of God's word made the work especially valuable 
to one who had himself experienced uncertainty and 
spiritual distress. He knew, no man better, the agonies 
of the New England conscience over definitions of 
dogma as well as the joy received through divine 
illumination, and it was from deep conviction that he 
wrote in the opening sentence of the Introduction, " The 
doctrine of the Trinity, offered to man as a benignant 
revelation of practical truth, ought always to be 
handled in a spirit of Christian tenderness." The last 
volume of sermons he ever published opened with a 
discourse entitled "The Trinity a Practical Truth," 
which closes with a solemn appeal : " Has this wonder- 
ful and blessed doctrine entered in, to bear its gracious 
fruit in your own weak and tempted lives? Do you 
personally, laying aside your own pride, humbly 
repenting of your sin, believe in God, as they must 
believe who are to live and not die ? 

" Daily having confessed Him, are you proceeding in 
a godly life more and more, growing into a higher sanc- 
tification of every power and affection of your soul ? 

" Only he who so believeth, saith your God, is 
saved." " 

In a letter on his birthday, May 28, 1867, Dr. Hunt- 
ington wrote: "Forty-eight! How much there seems 
yet to be done! How little accomplished! There are 
those thirteen years of a ministry, not exactly of Uni- 
tarianism, to be sure, but in the Unitarian denomina- 
tional interest. How shall I get them back ? Alas, only 
by trying to prevent others from a like mistake." 
1 Christ in tlie Christian Year : Trinity to Advent 



THE KINGS MESSENGER 267 

In the eight years passed as a presbyter, Frederic 
Huntington's public services were rendered almost 
entirely to his own diocese. In the meantime, however, 
his reputation increased and his gifts and influence 
became more widely known. When the death of the 
Right Reverend George Burgess left the Church in the 
state of Maine without a spiritual head, the choice of 
the Convention fell upon Dr. Huntington. The deci- 
sion which led to his declining the Episcopal office at 
that time, was made, as he stated to the standing com- 
mittee, on broad grounds, the comparative claims of 
the fields of labor. The usefulness, abundance of 
resources, and grave responsibilities of his position 
in Massachusetts could not be lightly estimated, and 
the voice of the Church concurred in his choice. 

The only General Convention of the Episcopal 
Church which he attended as a member of the House of 
Deputies, was that held in New York, in 1868. He took 
part with deep interest in all the proceedings, but it 
was not his temperament to feel tolerant toward exces- 
sive debate. A later newspaper communication, signed 
"Connecticut River," expresses something of this 
impatience, and he makes there a suggestion that each 
deputy, " before he introduces any new matter for 
consideration, ask himself at least five times, and per- 
haps some judicious friend once, whether it is required 
by the religious interests of the Church;" and that 
"when it is pretty evident to common sense how a 
question is to be decided, those of a contrary mind 
shall generally give over the forensic part of the fight." 

He himself gave unremitting attention to the work 
in committees, which he believed to be important in 
saving valuable time to the House. 



268 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Writing to his sister, Nov. 3, 1868, he said: "Con- 
trary to many timid apprehensions and some un- 
friendly prognostications, there was a remarkable 
harmony from first to last. No ill-feeling, — no bad 
temper, no faction, no strict party vote on any ques- 
tion. Even the most critical topics were discussed and 
disposed of with entire courtesy and kindness, some- 
times with playfulness, generally with seriousness and 
dignity. When the regular business was sometimes 
interrupted for a brief session of silent or spoken 
prayer, on some peculiarly weighty subject matter, 
pending the deliberations, like the choice of a Mis- 
sionary Bishop, the effect was very solemn indeed. 
Many people outside are disappointed at reading the 
reports, because they are so much taken up with mat- 
ters of law and order. That is doubtless one of the 
characteristics of our Church. But the fact is that the 
real moral and religious interest of the occasion is not 
shown at all in the reports of the secular papers, be- 
cause it centres in the great evening meetings, when 
the manifold and extensive missionary operations of 
the Body are considered. 

" I suppose you have seen the account in the ' Spirit 
of Missions,' of the grand gathering at the Academy 
of Music. I have hardly ever been more awed than 
when four thousand persons repeated the Apostles' 
creed, with a voice like the sound of many waters; and 
at the name of Jesus the whole vast assembly bowed 
low, as if a wave of the Spirit swept over them, bending 
every head. It was a great pleasure to me to become 
acquainted with many Churchmen, Bishops, and 
others, from distant parts of the country, those, from 
the South not having been North for many years." 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 269 

In 1869 the rector of Emmanuel Church was still in 
the prime of life, reaching in that year the age of fifty. 
He occupied a position conspicuous for public useful- 
ness, he was honored by the community in which he 
lived, beloved by his parish, with a large flock listening 
to his words and dependent upon him for instruction, 
guidance, and sympathy. The Church in Massa- 
chusetts was rapidly extending its field of influence, 
and the promise of his future labors in the diocese were 
such as to satisfy any man's ambition. The weight 
which pressed upon him most heavily, as a burden he 
felt unequal at times to bear, was that of so presenting 
the Word of God, in season and out of season, as to win 
hearts to Christ and to keep alive their spiritual conse- 
cration. In his sermon entitled "Christian Loneliness," 1 
the preacher undoubtedly drew from passages in his 
own life, which occurred not only when he struggled 
with the uncertainties of religious belief, but in con- 
nection with the sacred calling of a shepherd of souls. 
With his lofty conception of what preaching should be, 
he was more and more oppressed with the difficulty of 
gaining time for adequate preparation. It became a 
necessity for the busy pastor either to do his writing 
at midnight or to betake himself to another house 
where he could be undisturbed. These inconveniences, 
however, were of no account, compared with his dis- 
satisfaction over the result. The greater his facility 
of composition, after the practice of years, the more 
abhorrent it seemed to his sensitive conscience to 
produce a sermon which lacked spontaneity and the 
inward inspiration. No task, all his life through, was 
so delightful as to employ his intellectual gifts upon a 
1 Christian Believing and Living. 



270 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

subject in which his mind was deeply engaged. But 
it was proportionately difficult to feel that he could 
always do justice to his audience in the composition 
of two, or even one new discourse a week. The reality 
of this state of mind, familiar to earnest natures, but 
at this time in him almost overpowering, may be seen 
from a letter written just before his son was admitted 
to the diaconate. 

Boston, March 23, 1868. 
My dear George : — We shall expect to see you 
at the end of the week. As you will naturally see, the 
solemnity and sacredness of this period of your life 
are felt by me as well as by you. Twenty-six years of 
service in the ministry have not made it look common- 
place, or easy, or otherwise than awful. The attrac- 
tions, privileges, blessings, of the office are real, but 
they do not lighten the weight of accountability; no- 
thing can. I believe you are prepared for the work, so 
far as preparation can go before the work itself. But 
it is a school, a discipline, a tentative, unmastered busi- 
ness all through, from the beginning to the end. Who- 
ever does not expect to learn only from hour to hour, 
or God's heavenly grace in it, and to find it a path of 
incessant humiliations, had better forsake it early. I 
think I can truly say that the agony, the crucifixion 
of hope and pride and ambition, that I habitually 
suffer, Sunday nights, would long ago have driven me 
from any other calling. The Bible, the promises, prayer, 
the love of the Church, the loyalty to Christ, these are 
the stay and staff. 

After a season of incessant labor there was great 
refreshment in a visit to the farm. From thence, on a 



THE KINGS MESSENGER 271 

short spring vacation, he wrote to his two little girls at 
home. 

Hadley, 
Dear Old Hadley, May 11, 1868. 

Dear Ruth and Mary: — After what I wrote 
Jamie about Lock you will be glad to hear that he has 
been found. He and Ponto have had a good time all 
day. The squirrels have been very troublesome, eating 
up and carrying off corn; and I have shot two. One 
of them the white kitten took for her portion ; the other, 
Ponto buried, — for future use I suppose, in the garden, 
in one of the flower-beds, not yours though. If you 
plant squirrels, what will come up ? I don't know ; — 
hops, perhaps. The carpenter has been here and we 
have been building a new arbor. This morning we 
got up before five o'clock and liked it so well that we 
mean to do it again ; it gives such a long day for the 
work. 

Cousin Charlotte has bought a new carpet for her 
parlor and invited some of the North Hadley people 
to come to-morrow afternoon and help her make it up, 
and then take tea with her. • It seems to be a way they 
have here. Your Aunt Bethia is going, and I am 
expected to go to the tea and meet Mr. Beaman. 

We saw in Hadley Street the largest flock of birds — 
swallows — that I ever saw anywhere. There must 
have been several thousands. This evening there are 
bonfires in the fields, and they are very beautiful. 

Now I am going to read the paper your mother 
sent me. Give my love to her, and to Arria and 
Jamie. 

Your ever affectionate father, 

F. D. H. 



272 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

In August, 1868, Dr. Huntington wrote to a pa- 
rishioner who had begged him to find an opening in 
Massachusetts for a certain presbyter, of whom she 
had formed rather an undue estimate: — 

"If B. is doing work where he is, by all means let 
him stay there. He evidently thinks Romanism and 
modern Protestantism are the only Christianity there 
ever was in the world : does n't remember that the 
Kingdom of God stood some six hundred years before 
either of them; — takes St. Paul's mention of his pecul- 
iar and individual vocation to preach as upsetting the 
practice and doctrine of the original Twelve, and even 
the Saviour's own institution and commission; — con- 
founds the tolerance of continental Protestants (who 
were orderly but not regular) temporarily with the 
radicalism of these days; — puts Whately above the 
whole line of Anglican Divines and Early Fathers, — 
overlooks all that the N. T. insists upon as the Gospel 
of the Kingdom; — fails to see that 'exchanges' be- 
tween denominations are always inconsistencies (for 
if there is a real difference in sacred things, enough 
to base a separate denomination upon, how can it be 
right to ignore it in the public instruction ?), and would 
make a perfect farce of the Church's ordaining a Con- 
gregational Minister, if he may let a Congregational 
Minister into his pulpit the next week; — and does not 
consider that the moment you open the doors for 
altering the Prayer-book you are quite as likely to put 
Ritualism into it as Puritanism. 

' The summer hastens fast. Monday next I go to 
Boston, and so work begins. 

" Brooks at Trinity will be a great accession to our 
cause in Boston." 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 273 

It was at the General Convention in 18G8 that a 
favorable report was made on the creation of three 
new dioceses within the state of New York. Not 
many weeks after, these jurisdictions elected their 
respective heads. At the Albany Convention Dr. 
Huntington was a strong candidate; a little later the 
first Convention of Central New York elected Dr. 
Abram Littlejohn, who became the choice for Bishop 
of Long Island, the following week, and accepted that 
invitation. At a second election, held in Syracuse, 
January 10, 1869, Frederic Dan Huntington was chosen 
Bishop of Central New York. 

This new call to the Episcopate came to him with a 
far more compelling force than the preceding. One 
element in a change of feeling was the altered aspect 
of parochial activity. The prosperity of Emmanuel 
Church seemed assured, under the divine blessing. 
Its congregation, zealous in good works and united in 
spirit, had completed its Mission Church, and was 
likely to enlarge still further in that direction. Mean- 
time, although Dr. Huntington was doing in Massa- 
chusetts, as openly conceded, much of a bishop's work, 
this could not fail to be under increasing disadvantages. 
To the head of a new diocese, in the founding of its 
institutions, and the extension of its missionary work, 
there opened a field, made attractive by its harmony, 
its sympathy between clergy and laity, and its history 
under the leadership of Hobart and De Lancey. The 
Bishop of Western New York, from whose oversight 
the recently united parishes were removed, was a 
warm personal friend, eager to welcome a brother 
with every expression of affection and good- will. 

Frederic Huntington was not one to meet so august 



274 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

a call without careful consideration. He was as deeply- 
impressed with a sense of his own unworthiness for the 
higher office as of his insufficiency to reach the stand- 
ard he had set for himself as parish preacher. His 
was not a nature to rush lightly into any new path 
opening before him, or to set a value on the worldly 
inducements of honor and preferment. It was the 
large interests involved and the high ends in view 
which induced his acceptance. In a spirit of humility, 
but one of hopefulness and anticipation, he sent to the 
standing committee of the diocese of Central New 
York, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, 
a letter signifying his acceptance, subject to ecclesi- 
astical concurrence. 

Boston, Jan. 19, '69. 
To A. J. P. 

You will be interested, and the others, 1 to know that 
I shall have an Indian Mission in my Diocese, on the 
Onondaga Reservation. 

Yesterday was a terrible day. I sent in my letter of 
resignation, and the remonstrances and persuasions 
and offers of every kind of pecuniary and other induce- 
ments to stay here were hard to bear. They break 
sleep and distress the spirit. It touches me that you are 
so merciful. 

Ever affectionately, 

F. D. H. 

Boston, Feb. 6, 1869. 
To A. L. P. 

We are walking, of course, among sad faces and 
weeping eyes, and pleading remonstrances. Only one 

1 The Dakota League. 



THE KINGS MESSENGER 275 

comforter can turn the valley of Baca into a well of 
spiritual refreshment, and through this " Achor" open 
"a Door of Hope." The roots that have been striking 
nearly thirty years in one spot are all to be torn up. 
This is the third time such a wrench has come; but 
never before have we been dislodged from this com- 
munity. I trust my decision of the question is right. 
The nature of the office, its sacred and solemn demands 
and peculiar opportunities, the fine Missionary field 
in the Diocese, the unity of feeling and action among 
the Clergy, the strength and wealth of my Parish here, 
my own need of change of work to save health and 
prolong life, are among the chief reasons. It is a com- 
fort to find that the wise and good men of the Church, 
standing aloof from either local interest, the Bishops 
and others, uniformly bid me go. May Christ's strength 
only be made perfect in my weakness, and may the 
Church be served and advanced! 

Through Lent I want to give the dear flock here 
everything I can. Bishop Smith writes that he should 
prefer to have the Consecration in Boston, which, of 
course suits us all. 

Among the friends in New England who were dis- 
appointed, his brethren in the diocese gave expression 
to their sense of loss and of sincere regret. Although 
an invitation to a " Clerical breakfast," when privately 
suggested, was declined, from a characteristic distaste 
for functions and laudations, the letters of sympathy 
received at that time were preserved with deep appre- 
ciation. In resolutions sent by the annual Convocation, 
"the growth and prosperity of the Church in Massa- 
chusetts during the preceding years" were attributed 



276 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

" in a great degree to the blessing of God upon your 
faithful and loving labors." Most of the Church news- 
papers commended the elevation to the Episcopate 
of one eminently fitted for the office. To his personal 
characteristics, private correspondence and the press 
of that period bear interesting testimony. 

A Boston contributor to a Chicago weekly calls him 
"a perfect steam-engine in his untiring and amazing 
zeal." A brother clergyman expresses his admiration 
for one who, having a wealthy, fashionable metropolitan 
parish, still retained and kept ever aglow a " Missionary 
heart " to care for and go after the poor and dispersed. 

An editorial speaks of " the warm-hearted sympathy 
with every effort to advance the kingdom of Christ or 
to alleviate the sufferings of humanity, his accessi- 
bility to every claim upon his attention, his unwearied 
patience, kindliness, and gentleness of manners." One 
of the leading bishops of that time, writing of his 
thanksgiving over the choice to the sacred office of 
one whom he esteemed and valued, continues, in a 
strain more personal and peculiarly appropriate : 
" ^Tiile for the Church of God I rejoice, for yourself I 
can only express deep sympathy. The experience of 
over seven years in the Episcopate, and that, too, 
under the most favorable circumstances, shows that 
it is a position of unusual care, great self-sacrifice, 
constant perplexity and annoyances. To one who has 
nestled closely to the heart of an attached congrega- 
tion, and been able to feel under his head the pulsa- 
tions of their love, the isolation of official dignity and 
the complete divorce from all parochial ties, is felt 
with fearful power and pain. No honors given to the 
Bishop are as sweet as the warm love given to the 



THE KING'S MESSENGER 277 

Pastor; and you will often yearn for the glowing 
affection and kindling sympathies produced by parish 
intimacies, not found in the higher office to which you 
are called." These words from the Bishop of Pennsyl- 
vania ! were prophetic to him whom he addressed, of 
many future pangs of separation from the generous 
and devoted flock he was leaving and of the immedi- 
ate pains of parting. They are thus expressed in the 
farewell sermon at the conclusion of eight years of 
ministry : — 

"Ever since I had notice, through the voice of the 
Church, that the Master had another post for me, and 
especially during all this solemn leave-taking Lent, 
when I have occasionally turned my thoughts from the 
absorbing occupations here to the untried office as- 
signed me, I have wondered how I could spare all the 
intimate and tender attachments which are possible 
to a Minister and his family only in pastoral relations. 
After the air has been so warmed for us, all our lives, 
by affections strengthening every day, our hearts will 
be likely to find almost any other climate less genial 
and less comforting. 

" We have endeavored to subordinate what is per- 
sonal to the claims of the Kingdom of God. Less 
worthy influences may have stolen in unawares; and 
at any rate I have no idea of setting up a claim for the 
merits of a great sacrifice. I only ask that you will 
hold in occasional recollection my dependence on the 
Spirit of God, my inexperience in the way I am to take, 
and my need to be kept, through the power of your 
Christian intercessions, a wakeful watchman, a wise 
builder, a diligent Missionary, a patient and impartial 

1 Rt. Rev. William Bacon Stevens. 



278 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






pastor of a large and vigorous Flock, led hitherto by 
Master-shepherds . ' ' 

Associations and affections, so precious and so 
comforting, are not of the earth alone. The last Christ- 
mas of his life, Bishop Huntington wrote to a former 
parishioner by whom the beautiful Memorial has been 
erected in Emmanuel Church to its first rector : — 

" No member of the dear old Flock is more mindful, 
I believe, than you are of those happy days when you 
and your father used to sit before me, and close to me, 
in ' Emmanuel.' Yes, ' Happy Days ' they were, and all 
days since have been better for them." 



CHAPTER IX 

ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 

"Then said he : I am the guide of those pilgrims that are going to 
the Celestial country." 

The diocese of Central New York, organized in 
Convention Nov. 10, 1868, was set apart from that of 
^Yestern New York, and included fourteen counties 
in the centre of the great commonwealth, numbering 
within its jurisdiction one hundred and six parishes 
and missions, and one hundred and seventeen clergy. 
Of the six large seats of population the choice of a 
See City fell naturally between Utica and Syracuse, 
although cordial overtures looking towards the bishop's 
residence were made from several other cities. Reasons 
laid before him decided the future diocesan to select 
Syracuse ; one strong inducement, in view of his rela- 
tions to the whole flock under his care, being the con- 
venient railroad facilities in all directions. The region, 
which he soon rapidly traversed from end to end, is 
one of unusual loveliness, fertility, and agricultural 
resources, with trade and manufacturing interests 
which have steadily increased. Its most commanding 
educational institution is Cornell University, but it 
includes Syracuse and Colgate Universities and Ham- 
ilton College. All through the rich farming country 
are quiet villages, the abode of a refined and stable 



280 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

population, the older communities to be found in the 
hill towns, where churches, courthouses, and acad- 
emies were erected in the early days. The picturesque 
lakes, the smiling valleys, the grand stretches of upland 
looking towards the wilderness, combine advantages 
of climate and scenery unsurpassed in our northern 
latitudes. 

The salt springs in Syracuse early attracted a com- 
pany of settlers who developed these natural resources 
and laid the foundations of a prosperous city, its op- 
portunities for trade and manufacture being still 
further increased by the opening of the Erie Canal. 
From the beginning, the active spirit of the great West 
pervaded this business centre, while Utica, only sixty 
miles nearer Albany, retained the conservative char- 
acter of that section of the state. 

The consecration of Frederic Dan Huntington to 
the Episcopate took place in Emmanuel Church, Bos- 
ton, on April 8, 1869. Rt. Rev. Benjamin B. Smith, of 
Kentucky, then the presiding bishop, was the conse- 
crator and Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of 
Western New York, the preacher. The occasion was 
one of much interest; impressive in the beauty of the 
service and the deep sympathy manifested by those 
present. On the following day the newly-made prelate 
ordained his eldest son, George Putnam Huntington, 
to the priesthood, and, after holding a confirmation for 
his parishioners at Emmanuel, set forth across the 
Hudson for his new field of labor. 

His first service was held in Grace Church, Utica, 
where, among the floral decorations, the text, " My grace 
is sufficient for thee," impressed the new chief pastor 
by its touching significance. Following directly were 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 281 

confirmations in New Hartford, Auburn, in the three 
parishes in Syracuse, and the two in Oswego. From 
the latter place the rector of Christ Church had writ- 
ten, early in March, concerning the coming visita- 
tion : — 

We are counting the days, and are very much like 
children at school looking forward to the pleasure of 
home with their father. May God give to us all his 
blessing is the prayer of 

Yours very truly, 

Amos B. Beach. 

In January, 1869, Rev. Joseph M. Clarke, later one 
of the presbyters attending Bishop Huntington at his 
consecration, sent him a long and confidential com- 
munication. 

After expressing his own satisfaction and that of 
his parishioners at the choice of their spiritual over- 
seer, he says : " I well remember my own delight when 
I first saw that the former well-known Chaplain of 
Harvard College had been confirmed in the American 
Catholic Church. A member of my parish here gave 
me the two published volumes of your sermons, and I 
have made use of them and of the ' Rock of Ages ' in 
winning to the faith, and confirming in it, those who 
have been under alien influences. 

"If you come to reside in Syracuse, as I trust you 
will, you will find the atmosphere here, I think, not so 
very different from that of Boston. We are the head- 
quarters of the isms for Western New York. Our city 
being about the geographical centre of the state as 
well as the diocese, progressives, generally, as well as 



282 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the politicians, hold their conventions here ; and there is 
sufficient of each of the elements to welcome them and 
make them feel at home. In the midst of all, the great 
Conservative power here, as elsewhere, is the Church. 
St. Paul's parish has four hundred communicants ; my 
own, which, as well as Trinity, is a free church parish, 
started in 1848, has three hundred. 

" The Church is growing very rapidly, and we are 
looking forward to doing much work in city missions, 
in parish schools, and in charitable institutions, in 
which it will be the greatest possible help if we can 
have the bishop's residence and influence here. Syra- 
cuse, too, is finely fitted to be a centre of influence in 
evangelizing the region around it. The Church has 
suffered much in Central New York by the emigration 
westward. There are many feeble parishes, and many 
more stations where there are a few scattered sheep 
that ought to be looked up by some * Evangelist ' of 
Christ." 

From St. Paul's rectory, April 23, 1869, Bishop 
Huntington wrote to his family in Boston : — 

" It is six o'clock and the full sunlight is pouring in 
at the doors of the study of Mr. Hills where I am writ- 
ing. Hitherto the Lord hath helped me. With many 
hours of depression and great bodily weariness, I get 
through each day without sinking down. Monday I 
came here and held service, and confirmed at Trinity 
in the evening. With a very short night I started off 
Tuesday morning for Oswego, so as to breakfast with 
Dr. Beach. This was my hardest day. It was oppres- 
sively hot, and all the courage and strength in me 
seemed to be gone. At the forenoon service, though the 
Church was full, I could not rouse myself to any 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 283 

interest or vigor; the words seemed to fall flat. A 
despairing conviction took hold of me, which I have 
felt before, that all my sermons would be useless to 
me, and that I could never meet the expectations of 
the people in the preaching part of my work. Through 
most of the day the agony was fearful. After dinner 
the people began to pour into the house to see me. 
Two or three times I went upstairs utterly exhausted ; 
but each time some important body or other called 
and must be seen. About six o'clock a pouring shower 
came up from the lake, and I went to my room and fell 
into a deep sleep for half an hour. In the evening I got 
through better, confirming fifty-two at the Church of 
the Evangelists. 

" The Oswego people talked a great deal about the 
Fishers, 1 and were as kind as possible. Next morning 
I came back to Syracuse. The evening service at St. 
Paul's went off finely, so did that of the Convocation 
yesterday. It looks oddly to see a church full of men and 
women in the middle of a week-day forenoon. It makes 
me realize the greatness and solemnity of my position 
and responsibility. I can hardly describe my feelings 
as I stand surrounded by twenty or thirty of the Clergy 
all looking to me for direction in every particular. It is 
impossible for me to doubt that they are really and 
heartily satisfied with their Bishop. You will not sup- 
pose that I am elated or carried away by the demon- 
strations; on the contrary, I am often sad and bitterly 
self-distrustful in the midst of them. But you may find 
a momentary gratification in knowing the fact that a 
more cordial and general expression of personal satis- 

1 Bishop Huntington's eldest sister, Eizabeth, married George 
Fisher, of Oswego, which was their residence for many years. 



284 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

faction and favor could hardly be conceived than I 
meet even-where, in churches, dwelling-houses, streets, 
cars, and newspapers. The whole people take pride in 
doing me honor. You would be amused at some of 
the forms that their pleasure assumes. One Auburn 
man objected to my calling on Secretary Seward before 
he called on me, for, says he, ' The Bishop 's smarter 
than Seward any day.' The business men say the 
Bishop is practical, and the women have various ways 
of making it appear that they like his looks, and the 
little girls take hold of his hands and say that they 
are glad he is going to live where they can see him in 
the street. The old church people pay him their best 
compliment when they say his ways and manners 
remind them of Bishop De Lancey, and the old Demo- 
crats when they observe that he looks like Governor 
Seymour. How thankful I shall be if God grants me 
the blessing of reunion to you all, dear wife and chil- 
dren. It is but a dreary business without you; and as 
to hurry and labor, I have never, in all my busiest and 
hardest Lent work of the parish, seen anything so 
fatiguing. But I have had no headache at all. I gener- 
ally sleep until five or six o'clock, and the last two days 
have been fresher than before." 

To his youngest son, Jamie, he wrote: "You would 
have been impressed very deeply to see the Onondagas 
come up to the chancel yesterday. There were thirteen 
of them, mostly men, but some women with red and 
green shawls over their heads, some old and some 
young, but all with the sad, solemn look and movement 
characteristic of their doomed race. There were some 
magnificent figures and gray heads among them. 
They all sat near the door, waited till the rest of the 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 285 

congregation had partaken, and then in single file 
(' Indian file,' we used to say) they moved up the aisle 
and knelt down to receive the sacrament. The Saviour 
died for them as much as for us. The Church only 
honors Him and herself in welcoming them. I have 
hardly ever felt more moved than at this touching sight. 
A kind of awe seemed to fall upon all our hearts, and 
there was a silence that could be felt. They remained 
after the service, and I shook hands with each one. 
They looked intently at me with their piercing eyes, 
but said little. They have a name for me, I am told, 
and shall try to find it out. 1 

" You will find beautiful walks around the city hil- 
locks. The street that bears your name is one of the 
handsomest I have seen anywhere. Dr. Wilbur has 
brought me some beautiful hepaticas." 

Skaneateles, June 18, '69. 

To the Same. 

My dear Boy : — You will remember this as the place 
of beauty, lying seventeen miles southwest of Syra- 
cuse, which we were to have for our rural retirement, 
and to which you were sometimes to walk of a Satur- 
day ? Well, I drove over the road yesterday with a fine 
pair of sorrel horses fresh from the stable, and a light 
open barouche, having for companions a former 
Governor who lives here, and two doctors of divinity 
(Clarke of Syracuse and Wilson of the Cornell Univer- 
sity), and a splendid ride it was, along noble slopes, 
covered with thriving farms. But, although you have 

1 This note was left among Bishop Huntington's papers : "Your 
Onondaga name is Ka-hen-do-wah-nen. A very large field, with an 
indirect reference to the harvest." 

" W. M. Beauchamp." 



286 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

got a pretty good pair of legs and know how to use 
them, I think you would find them a little tired at the 
end of the walk. The Village nestles in a Valley, on a 
hillside, at the end of the lovely lake, — tho' the whole 
region is high and open to the light. As we drove in just 
before sunset nothing could be more perfect in ap- 
pearance. The centre of the lake, surrounded by 
graceful shores, partly wooded and partly dotted with 
settlements, was still, and reflected the sunlight in 
many brilliant and more delicate colors. The little 
boats lay on the water, with, their sharp outlines, and 
here and there a man was pulling across with his oars. 
Then as we walked home from the little Church down 
by the water-side, at ten o'clock, after a very animating 
service, the moon was bright, and we had a scene of 
another kind, but equally picturesque. 

I wish you could have been at the Convention, the 
proceedings were so orderly, the worship so grand, 
the services so earnest and everything so satisfactory. 
Wednesday evening there was a superb reception 
given in the Bishop's name at the residence of Roscoe 
Conkling, Esq., U. S. Senator, where I stayed. In all 
my ways thus far, going and coming, and prosecuting 
my sacred work, I have been greatly prospered and 
happy, as you have prayed that I might be. 

Friday next, I hope to see the dear old home, and to 
rest about ten days. On Monday, July 5th., I shall have 
to start again and go Westward. 

God bless and keep and comfort and strengthen you 
for every duty. Give my love to all in the house. Ever 
most affectionately, 

Your father, 

F. D. H. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 287 

The greater part of the first summer was passed by 
the new Bishop in his diocese, with occasional short 
vacations at the farm in Hadlcy. In September he took 
his family to Syracuse to a home purchased for their 
use by some prominent churchmen of that city, under 
the lead of the Hon. George F. Comstock, who from 
the first urged upon Bishop Huntington this choice 
for his headquarters. 

Hadley, Sept. 29, 1869. 

To A. J. P. 

Right glad you made me by your pleasant words 
from Shelburne. I should have been sorry to turn 
away Westward without something coming from you. 
This setting our faces away from Boston, instead of 
towards it, this particular season when all the associa- 
tions are connected with a return to the familiar scenes 
of labor and fellowship, makes the change in our life 
more a reality, perhaps, than it has been before. 

But we have no misgivings, I believe, about the 
Divine call and the duty; and that makes hard things 
easier. All my life has been so abundant in blessing 
and in the fulfillment of my plans and desires that it 
would be mean and ungrateful in me to take up my 
staff with complaining. I like the work of my office, 
and it seems to me it may favor the growth of the many 
neglected graces in my character. There seems to be 
less temptation than before to put self uppermost : and 
that is certainly one of our commonest and greatest 
dangers. 

It seems as if I were writing to all of you. 

It will be a great relief to hear that there is a Rector 
at " Emmanuel." The " Good Shepherd " must depend 



288 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

much on that. We can keep saying, "The Lord 
reigneth." 

There seems to be no time for a league meeting that 
I can attend at present. 1 

Christ love you and keep you always. 

Faithfully and affectionately, 

F. D. H. 

A few months later Bishop Huntington wrote to an- 
other of these personal friends at Emmanuel Church, 
making his first appeal outside the diocese for aid in 
the work among the Indian people of his own jurisdic- 
tion. Speaking of the Onondagas he says : " They have 
hardly waited for us to seek after them: they have 
come seeking us, — asking for our instruction, our 
worship, our faith, our blessing. They are ready to 
receive the Gospel at our hands. They want, they say, 
the ' Old Church ' that Bishop Hobart offered them. 
One of the Chiefs said to me to-day in my study : ' Now 
that you have come to live so near us we feel strong: 
we believe you will take care of us.' I must try to do 
it. 

" Our Missions are extending so rapidly that all the 
funds of the Board are in demand for the regular Mis- 
sionary operations. I believe that some of my dear 
parishioners of the former days will be glad to send 
me something for this most interesting and touching 
charity. May God bless all the givers." 

From the response that came from this effort on the 
part of women who undertook it, the church building 

1 The Dakota League, started, and carried on at first largely, by 
a band of women at Emmanuel Church, a number of whom were 
together at Shelburne, N. H., when this letter was written. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 289 

on the Reservation was repaired, a chancel made, and 
a bell hung in the belfry to summon the flock to wor- 
ship. 

The house on James Street was large and attractive, 
shaded by beautiful trees and situated in a delightful 
neighborhood. The only children now left at home 
were the daughters, a third having been born in Bos- 
ton. The elder son remained at Maiden, Massachu- 
setts, where in 1874, he married Lilly St. Agnan Bar- 
rett, continuing in charge of St. Paul's Parish, a post 
of steady and arduous labor, for sixteen years. His 
brother was absent from the family circle at school 
and college until 1876, when he returned to Syracuse, 
prepared for sacred Orders at St. Andrew's Divinity 
School, and took charge of Calvary Mission. Much of 
the correspondence which has been preserved is from 
the Bishop to his sons, usually hasty epistles written 
in the brief periods between constant journeys, but 
giving glimpses of the interests which filled his life and 
the strong ties of home and family. 

In a birthday letter to one of his daughters, in 1870, 
he says: "About the time this reaches you, you will 
be passing another milestone. It adds to my home- 
sickness to be absent from the circle at the Feast. An- 
other year I don't believe we shall want to repeat the 
experience of this; and yet after all, I shall have to be 
away from the family just so much. As we go on, we 
all feel more and more, I suppose, that the great ob- 
jects life is given for are few and simple; and that 
they lie largely outside of ourselves. The family, home- 
affection, constantly becomes, with me, a larger and 
larger share of the whole interest and comfort of ex- 
istence." 



290 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Syracuse, Jan. 1, 1870. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

My dear Sister : — That date I write for the first time 
to you. It is before breakfast, and for a wonder the sky 
looks as if the sun might smile upon us. I hope and 
pray that with the New Year much gentle and com- 
forting light may shine upon you, — upon your heart, 
your home, your daily life, your inward communion 
with God. The years come and go ; but not so our love 
for each other, which is independent, of the changes of 
time; not so either our faith in Christ and His mercy 
to us, — which are above all accident and decay. He 
is the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever, — what- 
ever else fluctuates. In the Church we commemorate 
to-day the beginning of his suffering in the flesh and 
his obedience to the law, but He may be in all things 
an example to us, even in subjection to outward ordi- 
nances. It is very impressive that the Lord of glory 
should so respect and obey the regulations of a religious 
economy which is adapted to human necessities and 
mortal infirmities. How thoroughly and entirely He 
took our nature upon him! 

You don't know how much I enjoyed my visit with 
you. It would do me good, I believe, if I should so spend 
a day or two every month. It was a real rest, and a 
delightful communion. We all unite in messages of love 
and hearty greeting, 

Ever affectionately and faithfully yours, 

F. D. H. 

The first season brought its taste of inclement 
weather, traveling across country in the days when 
railroad communication was limited. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 291 

Syracuse, March 10, 1870. 
Back again, by a ride in a driving storm through 
eighteen miles of snow-drifts, in an open sleigh, four 
horses, from Central Square, — so called, from being 
the centre of nothing, but just beyond "Cicero" and 
"Clay." 

Twelve months after his consecration to the Epis- 
copate Bishop Huntington wrote: — 

Syracuse, April 8, '70. 

Dear George: — This is an anniversary of search- 
ing thoughts, and, I am sure, of sincere gratitude. I 
feel as if I had only yet made a few scratches on the 
surface of the ground. But there has been no disaster, 
no grave disappointments or discord, I believe. 

In our home, how many blessings we have seen ! 

Binghamton, Monday morning. 
(May, 1870.) 

To Mrs. Huntington. 

Saturday I was as homesick as a schoolboy after 
his first vacation. How can I ever get the better of it ? 
Bright weather always makes it worse. Close work and 
the remembrance of God's goodness and of duty to 
Him are, I believe, the best remedies. Yesterday we 
laid the corner-stone of the House of the Good Shep- 
herd, under the bright sun; a long file of S. S. children 
escorted the procession and cast bunches of flowers 
upon the stone after it was laid, moving in a circle, and 
covering the spot with a floral crown. Hymns and 
chants, Glorias, prayers and addresses, filled up an 
hour. Of course Mrs. Wright was very happy. The 
Mission is conducted by a League, and as usual the 






292 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

work outward is blessing and strengthening everything 
within. To-day I move Westward to two Missionary 
stations. Would it not be nice if I were with you all 
to-day ? Jim is starting off for Manlius, I suppose, and 
the two darling girls for school. The Lord bless and 
keep you. 

Ever faithfully and lovingly, 

Your husband, 

F. D. H. 
Tell Pattison the hat was polished up in the nick of 
time, as it was forced to come under the eyes of the 
multitude yesterday. 

The P. S. message, to a devoted presbyter and inti- 
mate family friend, indicates a characteristic of Bishop 
Huntington, whose disregard of externals sometimes 
laid a burden upon his household. His easy habit of 
preferring old clothes to new became apparent as he 
went his rounds, but such unconventionally was unex- 
pected in a newly-made prelate. 

The wife of a distinguished citizen, herself as un- 
worldly as she was preeminently gifted, used to tell a 
story of her first impression of their new neighbor. 
They were driving past as he left his own door, and 
when her husband told her who it was, Mrs. S. ex- 
claimed: "Why, Charles, he wears as shabby a coat 
as you do!" 

It was not in dress alone, however, that he preserved 
a simplicity of life, which grew upon him, rather than 
diminished, as age and honors increased. He always 
insisted upon carrying his own traveling-case, heavy 
though it might be, and for many years walked with it 
in his hand to and from the station, or jumped off the 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 293 

moving train as it passed near the house. He planned 
his journeys, went and came, expecting nowhere defer- 
ence or distinction. The habits of early rising in order 
to get the work of correspondence off his hands 
promptly, of moving rapidly from one point to another, 
and of reading and writing during the hours of travel; 
his hardihood in driving long distances through any 
weather to avoid delay, — all these contributed to the 
accomplishment of a multitude of affairs. 

In business matters he was clear and methodical, 
without giving much concern to the acquisition or the 
expenditure of money. In his Boston parish the salary 
barely met the expenses of city life and the education 
of his children. As a bishop his income was still less, 
and there were many demands upon it. While he never 
desired riches for himself or his family, he used to say 
that he sometimes occupied his wakeful hours at night 
planning how he could dispose of large sums for the 
objects in which he was interested. These were visions 
which, in spite of kind assistance in the diocese and 
without, were never realized. Faith and courage on his 
part were not wanting when a definite thing must be 
accomplished, but it may be that the fact of his never 
obtaining large use of wealth from its stewards, is ac- 
counted for by an ingrain Puritan austerity, which is 
not the temperament for the attainment of material 
ends. 

Syracuse, May 25, 1870. 

Dear George : — It is good to get back from a long 

and tiresome visitation into this quiet, shaded, resting 

home, — for a few days. I had nearly three services 

a day, for nine days. Your mother met me at Norwich, 



294 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

and saw the valley of the Chenango, and the gem of 
it, Oxford, with its beautiful stone church, ivy-covered ; 
its elms* lawns, lovely Rectory and accomplished Rec- 
tor. 

Next week I must write my address for Convention. 
We have just closed our semi-annual meeting of the 
Board of Missions, showing vigorous work in all direc- 
tions, and nearly $3000 in the Treasury. We prize 
your brief notes, not for their brevity, and keep near 
you in your Parish work from day to day. Hoping to 
see you the last week in June, 

Ever faithfully and affectionately, 

Your father, 

F. D. H. 

Syracuse, May 28, '70. 

My dear Sister : — You see by the date that I 
have come to another of the way-marks. One hardly 
knows whether to make a birthday a Feast or a Fast. 
If we think only of God's mercies, — of health and 
home and friendship, of prosperous undertakings, of 
faith and hope and the privileges of the Church, — it 
should be a Festival. But the remembrance of our own 
failures and faults puts upon it somehow something of 
the character of humiliation. 

I wish you could see the beauty of this spot ; every- 
thing is so fresh and bright; the foliage is so abundant 
and the whole street and scene are so rural, — so un- 
like a city. 

You are in the beloved old home. How perfect it 
must be ! We think and speak of you every day, I be- 
lieve. The work I came here to do seems to be going 
forward prosperously; and yet the progress of sin, of 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 295 

all sorts, especially in the great cities, is fearful. We 
might all despair, but for Hini who sitteth above the 
floods. 

At the end of that summer, after a rest at the farm, 
a few lines in pencil, written to his sister on the journey 
back to Syracuse, express the inevitable sense of sepa- 
ration from much that was left behind. 

Delavan House, 
Albany, Oct. 7, '70. 

Our visit in Boston has given us the sight of many 

dear faces, and made us feel afresh that we are not 

wholly forgotten there. Indeed it is doubtful whether 

in any new place friendships quite so deep and warm 

can ever be formed as those in Massachusetts. I feel 

it more than before. Abundance of good-will, kindness, 

courtesy, respect, consideration, we have in the home 

we have lately made : and if we do not forfeit them by 

some fault of our own we may reasonably expect they 

may be continued to us. It is true, nevertheless, roots 

are not easily struck after fifty years of age. We are 

content and thankful. It is plain that my work is in 

my Diocese and not in Boston. The sense of being 

engaged in the Master's service, and in this way, is 

enough. Syracuse is much more natural and attractive 

than it was a year ago. And there has been much of 

Hadley and Boston we have been permitted to keep. 

Hadley, Sunday evening, 

Sept. 11th., '70. 

To M. M. 

My dear Friend: — We have thought and spoken of 
you several times to-day, feeling your absence. By 



296 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

God's ereat eoodness. after meeting a creat maDv per- 
sons of my Diocese within the week at Syracuse, visit- 
ing schools and flocks, setting some wheels in motion, 
and finding the outlook generally rather encouraging. 
I got back in time to help make ready for the nuptials 
and to crpeet the arriving iruests. 1 

This morning the air was almost supernaturally glori- 
ous, and so it has continued. Fair weather came out 
of the North, with an atmosphere of a blue so deep, a 
transparency so rare, a splendor so surpassing, that the 
Sunday seemed as much of the New Jerusalem as of 
the earthly expectation. As I sat reading, just before 
church-time, a messenger from Amherst rode up to say 
there was no preacher there. Of course I stood in. and 
the First Lesson and the Epistle suited the sermon on 
the Water out of the Rock. At four o'clock we had our 
Evening Prayer, and I read a sermon of Liddon's. 
Then we strolled out: H. and A. and the little girls, 
Ponto and the cat: all that are left here except my 
saintly sister. Over all the landscape — valley and 
hill — the sharp light glimmered and blazed: and the 
noble shadow- had their edges cut as with the finest 
chisel: and just the faintest tinge of Autumn lent pa- 
thos to this stately Sabbatic pomp. We went to the 
barns: then down into the meadow towards the river: 
then out south of the build full, long view 

of Holyoke. shifting its shade every moment as the sun 
sank lower: — and here the bell munded out, and never 
more musically : — then across the sheep-yard an 
the apple-trees, firs and maple-: then to the stum: 
the grand old elm that used to mark the bounds of our 
estate: then across the road, down the maple avenue, 
1 The wedding of a niece, in the old homestead. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 297 

into the pastures; and home again, grateful and eon- 
tent. 

Syracuse, Feb. 4, 1871. 

My dear Sister: — I have been sitting by the fire 
and thinking of this date and what it brings to mind. 
A great deal ean be remembered : — but how little in 
my life now could have been foreseen when mother 
died. Next after what our parents were to us, among 
the family blessings, I am thankful that the homestead 
remains, and that you and Theodore are so near to it 
as to be identified with it. 

The w T inter wears away rapidly. My visits to Phila- 
delphia and New York, — where I went to preach, and 
to attend a council, — took me through great storms. 
These absences make the intervals at home very pre- 
cious. There is a good deal of meaning in that little 
phrase, "They shall go no more out." Let us know 
how all is going with you. Wishing you peace and 
comfort, 

Yours affectionately, 

F. D. H. 

Rev. George Huntington was much engaged in ob- 
taining the means for the erection of a building for St. 
Paul's Church, Maiden, and his father, who heartily 
aided in the undertaking, wrote to him concerning the 
subscriptions, a large part of which came from his own 
old parish of Emmanuel. 

Feb. 18, 1871. 
Dear George: — We were all much excited by the 
news of the $1000. It certainly comes as an answer to 



298 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

many prayers, from Him who turns the hearts of men. 
Your want has scarcely been out of my mind half a day 
since you were here. Let thanks be given to God! 
Ought you not to proceed at once to complete the sub- 
scription ? Will not this gift stimulate others ? 

I send two pamphlets that may interest you. Prof. 
Lewis's observations on the traces of an original primi- 
tive monotheism in Homer, especially in the Homeric 
titles of Zeus as compared with the Scriptural praises 
of Jehovah, are very interesting. They bear on the 
great question whether the world's civilization is a pro- 
gress ab initio, or the recovery from a lapse; — two 
philosophies. 

We have had a branch of the Perfectionist agitation 
here. Brother S. thought of staying to preach on Sun- 
day, but proved amenable to gentle advice, and find- 
ing he must use the Prayer-book and get leave of the 
Rectors, amiably went home. Their mistake is not so 
much heresy as sentimental disproportioning of the 
Truth. 

To-morrow I go to the Indians to confirm. Keep 
Moberly for Hadley. I am reading Vaughan's sermons. 
They are the best yet, — better than Liddon's or Rob- 
ertson's as sermons. 



Syracuse, April 14, 1871. 
To A. L. P. 

It is two years to-morrow since I came into this Dio- 
cese. When you intercede for me, pray that the years 
to come may witness in me increasing devotion, self- 
forgetfulness, gentleness, courage and efficiency in 
serving both the inward and outward Kingdom of our 
Lord, — the Crucified and the Risen. With my own 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 299 

supplications are mingled "humble and hearty thanks.'' 
How much to be grateful for, so much open oppor- 
tunity for work : good-will, kindness, a diocese harmo- 
nious and united to a degree, I suppose, remarkable 
and perhaps unparalleled. And in my home what 
countless blessings! 

Syracuse, May 28, 1871. 

My dear James : — It is my great privilege to be 
at home on my birthday. Your mother and I came back 
yesterday, after a week's visitations along the Southern 
line of the Diocese, in cities and villages, large Parishes 
and Mission -stations, taking us up Cayuga Lake and 
through a great deal of beautiful scenery which I want 
you and George to see some time with us. 

To-day the Whitsunday glory has been complete. 
A clear still splendor has covered the fresh green earth. 
This morning I went up to "Grace" to Communion 
and preached. I never had a happier birthday, I be- 
lieve. Thank you for your remembrance. Labuntur 
anni. I don't know that I should prefix the Eheu to the 
fugaces. 

"Swift years, but teach me how to bear, 
To feel, and act, with strength and skill, 
To reason wisely, nobly dare, — 
And speed your courses as ye will." 

Our times are in the Father's hand. His goodness 
and mercy have followed me all the days of my life. 

As to examination, — take it easily. Dismiss anxiety. 
Even mistakes, — mental mistakes, — before twenty 
years can be made up ; with character it is more difficult. 
With deep, strong, tender love, 

Your father at fifty-two, 

F. D. H. 



300 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

My dear George : — Our thoughts are much with 
you to-day and no doubt with all your cares and occu- 
pations you remember us. I know well what a confir- 
mation-day is to a Parish Priest; every year it not 
only tries and proves him, what manner of man he is, 
— and searches him through and through, — but it 
yields him also generally "the joy of harvest." Your 
Bishop spoke so cordially of you the other day that, in 
addition to deeper satisfactions, I hope you will find 
his visit agreeable and encouraging. It is pleasant to a 
Bishop to receive, as he leaves a Parish, some grate- 
ful word from the Rector, as an indication that he has 
not wholly missed the mark or labored in vain. 

Your mother and I came back yesterday. Her com- 
pany was a great comfort to me all the way. The life I 
lead is essentially a solitary one. Nobody comes very 
near the Bishop — however many may love and care 
for him at a distance. I have never been lonely till 
within the last two years; — it is good for me, I dare 
say, — and it is about the only drawback on a most 
favored and blessed lot. 

Bishop Huntington set himself in the beginning of 
his Episcopate to found a Church boarding-school for 
boys, which was opened in Manlius in 1869, and soon 
after established there on a fine property, with a suit- 
able building and equipment, largely due to the liber- 
ality of Judge Comstock. This institution was, for the 
rest of the Bishop's life, an object of interest and 
solicitude. He carried for a long time the burden of 
its finances, and took a responsibility for its manage- 
ment. When relieved of these cares he continued to 
give it his spiritual support and sympathy. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 301 

Syracuse, Oct., 1871. 

Sunday evening. 

To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

To-day I have been to visit St. John's School, at 
Manlius. The boys seem contented and happy, and 
they are remarkably reverential in Church. What a 
blessing it would be to our land and the world if that 
noble and beautiful trait of character were more com- 
mon. 

We start to-morrow morning, God willing, for Rich- 
mond and Norfolk. My thoughts are often with you 
all and almost everything about the farm is remem- 
bered. It is all safe in Theodore's hands, under the 
Great Guardian. We had a summer full of blessings. 
One of the chief comforts was your being with us so 
much. 

My address will be House of Bishops, Episcopal Con- 
vention. 

The Triennial which met in Baltimore in the autumn 
of 1871, was the first in which Bishop Huntington took 
his seat in the Upper House. It was in keeping with 
the reserve and self-distrust of his nature that he was 
occupied solely in listening and observation, and did 
not utter himself in motion or debate. It is said that at 
subsequent Conventions he seldom gave expression to 
his opinions as a speaker. 1 There was much, however, 
both in the legislative proceedings and in the mission- 
ary w^ork, in which he took the keenest interest, and he 
greatly enjoyed contact with men of wisdom and learn- 
ing. 

1 The venerable Bishop R. H. Wilmer of Alabama wrote in 1892: 
" Looking back on several General Conventions I recall with ad- 
miration your still silence." 



302 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

The committee work which he most enjoyed was 
that devoted to the preparation of a new Hymnal ; and 
the final adoption, at this time, of a collection to which 
he gave many weeks of labor, was a source of great sat- 
isfaction. Although later superseded by the one now 
in use, the Hymnal of 1871 was far in advance of the 
previous one and was received with favor. 

Events in the Church at large had made this Con- 
vention one of anxious anticipation and its results were 
a cause of thanksgiving. 

Baltimore, Oct., 1871. 

The harmony of the Convention in both Houses is 
extraordinary. Bishop Whittingham told me yesterday, 
as I was dining at his house, that after an experience 
of fifty years he has never seen anything like it, the mani- 
fest and felt power of the Holy Ghost, answering prayer, 
and this just when the Church was thought to be on the 
edge of anarchy. 

Syracuse, Nov., 1871. 

My dear Sister: — On this day of preparation 
for the Feast, when the guests used to assemble from 
different quarters, — as I suppose they do still in some 
New England homes, — our thoughts, at least, natu- 
rally draw together. How distant the remembrance is 
of the scenes in the old kitchen forty odd years ago, — 
every part of them, in all their details, from the great 
blazing oven to the little many-shaped tin pie-pans, 
when the favorite pie of each one of us was baked. Rice 
pie with raisins was always my choice. Mother's figure 
moving in the midst of all the busy goings-on, with her 
remarkable blending in face and manner, of energy 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 303 

and thoughtfulness, conscientious care and tender affec- 
tion, is as distinct as can be. I have a particularly clear 
recollection of helping father, one such Wednesday, 
clear up the garden and front-yard, making ready for 
a tremendous snowstorm, combing the ground with 
our rakes, he said, for its white powdering. We shall 
think of you with love and prayers to-morrow. 

I have just finished my circuit of visitations for the 
season, returning yesterday. It is a relief to be at home, 
tho' there is always much that is interesting in my jour- 
neys amongst the Parishes. 

Syracuse, Dec. 28, 1871. 

Dear Bethia : — May the Christmas be cheerful 
with you and the promise of "Peace on Earth" be 
fulfilled to your own heart. Frost and moon promise to 
make it sparkling and Christmas-like. The cold is in- 
tense and the snow keeps falling. It sometimes falls 
here in such clouds as we never see in New England. 
Last night Hannah and I, returning from an Ordina- 
tion and Consecration some fifty miles away, were 
caught in a snow-drift in the morning. We had a Meth- 
odist minister with us, who sang hymns, and, among 
others, Mother's old " When marshaled on the nightly 
plain." It almost made me cry. 

I am very much engaged on the " Messenger, " hop- 
ing to issue a Church paper which at least w^ill be with- 
out personalities, polemics, or partisanship, and will 
help the readers to be better Christians. 

"The Gospel Messenger," a Church weekly, was 
originally established in 1827, in Auburn, for the west- 
ern part of the state, "in the interests of evangelical 



304 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

piety and sound religious information." At the time 
of the division of the diocese it was ably conducted, in 
Utica, by the Rev. William T. Gibson. Circumstances 
led to a formal conveyance to Bishop Huntington, by 
Bishop Coxe, who had received it from the executors 
of Bishop De Lancey, and the editorship and office 
were transferred to Syracuse, in January, 1892. Subse- 
quently it became connected with the "New York 
Church Journal." In 1876 a monthly organ of the 
diocese of Central New York, known as the " Gospel 
Messenger and Church Journal," was begun in Syra- 
cuse, and remained, excepting for a short period, under 
the Bishop's sole editorial supervision during the rest 
of his life. 

Amidst the many duties of office, with editorial work, 
special sermons, and general correspondence, there was 
leisure found, between frequent journeys, for a task 
particularly congenial, the preparation of a devotional 
work, "Helps to a Holy Lent." 

The introduction points out that " each daily portion, 
including something of Holy Scripture, meditation, 
hymn and prayers, bears an analogy to our liturgical 
appointments, and is a kind of faint reflection in minia- 
ture of the order of Divine service. A considerable part 
of the pages is original. Most of the Collects are taken 
from English sources, though many of them are trace- 
able to a more Eastern origin." Of this publication 
the Author wrote to his son at Harvard : — 

Feb. 20, 1872. 

Two copies of " Helps " have just gone off for you, — 
one for yourself, and the other to give away as you 
choose. Mr. Dutton writes that he has great difficulty 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 305 

in filling the orders, and that the demand in Boston 
has been too much for the supply. This is pleasant, but 
it won't turn our heads, — if we mind what the book 
teaches. It seems remarkable that your Church-fellows 
in College should keep up a service, however brief. 
God grant the blessing of His spirit on every gathering ! 
With that and the Bible lessons of Mr. B. you will have 
a good Lent. 

On Monday I go to New York to lecture in the course 
on "Religion and Modern Thought." I half wish it 
were at Cambridge instead. 

In the following summer a change took place in the 
diocese of Massachusetts, through the decease of Rt. 
Rev. Man ton Eastburn, its bishop for thirty years. The 
question as to the choice of a successor to so important 
a position was a matter of anxiety to the clergy and 
laity, and to no one more than to Bishop Huntington, 
in w T hose affections the Church in New England held 
a large share. 

He wrote to his son, the rector of St. Paul's, Maiden, 
from Hadley, Sept. 29, 1872. 

"lean make no better use of a part of this sacred day 
than to tell you why I should rejoice if this Diocese 
should choose Dr. Paddock to be its Bishop. It is be- 
cause, while he has other qualifications in a satisfactory 
degree, — judgment, wisdom, experience, patience, 
culture, and decision, — he is eminently godly. He has 
the spirit and the aims, the tone and the manners be- 
fitting the office. He would win confidence, and that 
would go far to reconcile differences and strengthen 
the Church." 

Of two clergymen whose names were mentioned for 



306 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

the sacred office, the writer says: " They are good and 
true Christian gentlemen, and faithful priests. I am, 
as you know, attached to them both. But they are both, 
not in the worst sense, men of the world. 

"The Kingdom of God should be led by men not of 
the world." 

Syracuse, Oct. 1, 1872. 
To his Son James. 

Here we are at the post of service again. The place 
looks finely, within the house and without. We found 
flowers and fruits awaiting us, sent by kind neighbors. 
The children seem very happy. The spasm of home- 
sickness, is, I suppose, about over with us all; and now 
we will all put our shoulders to work and care again, 
as in God's sight, and for the honor of Christ. 

Oct. 18, '72. 

It is late and I am tired with my day's work. You 
know I have taken charge of St. Paul's; but the Vestry 
have, at my recommendation, elected Mr. Lockwood, 
Rector, — one of our best and ablest and most schol- 
arly young Clergymen. 

May this be a new era for the Church in Massachu- 
setts ! I could wish that Diocese were more like mine, 
which is doing nobly. 

The first number of the " Gospel Messenger " of the 
diocese, chronicles two events of interest : one was the 
earliest general meeting of the Woman's Auxiliary of 
the Diocese, held in Watertown on January 5, 1876; 
and the other the opening of a building erected for the 
House of the Good Shepherd, Syracuse. This charity, 
which was Bishop Huntington's peculiar charge from 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 307 

its inception, started, as is often the case, from what 
seemed an incident of no great importance. In the 
winter of 1873 two strangers, Canadian women, were 
taken with illness, and found refuge at St. Joseph's, 
then the only hospital in the city and under the charge 
of Roman Catholic Sisters. Owing partly, perhaps, to 
the strength of religious differences in the community 
from which they came, they felt unhappy and lone- 
some among those not of their own household of faith. 
The case came to the attention of the Chief Shepherd, 
who in the care of his flock never forgot his consecra- 
tion vow, "to be gentle and merciful for Christ's sake 
to poor and needy people, and to all strangers desti- 
tute of help." It emphasized the fact that the Protes- 
tant Christians of Syracuse had made no provision 
for their own people who desired services of Divine 
consolation in time of sickness and absence from home. 
The population of the city was increasing so rapidly 
as to warrant hospital extension. Bishop Huntington 
laid the matter before the congregation of St. Paul's 
Church on a Sunday morning, with the result that at 
the close of the sermon, one of the members offered the 
use of a private residence for three months. Here the 
House of the Good Shepherd was opened, with such 
encouragement that larger quarters were found, and 
a trained nurse placed in charge. The Church Sister- 
hood, established by the Bishop to unite the women of 
the several parishes in active work for the sick and des- 
titute, assisted materially in securing furniture and 
weekly provision for the new institution. 

When the first hospital building was planned, a fine 
site on the hill near the University was presented by 
Judge Comstock; and means for its completion were 



308 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

obtained by the Bishop,, as he describes in the following 
letter. 

Hadley, July 5, '74. 

My dear George: — If you and Lilly were here 
our joy would be full. The sense of rest is very palpa- 
ble. Just at the time when work begins to subside, 
usually, i. e., at our Convention, it seemed to be neces- 
sary to take hold of the Hospital project in earnest. 
Several distant visitations had to be disposed of first, 
and in fact less than a fortnight's time remained for the 
whole business of raising the subscriptions. It was plain 
that the task must be mine or nobody's. To make it 
harder the Board voted that nothing should be done 
till $20,000 should be subscribed. This was supposed 
by many to be a deathblow to the project. Everybody 
looked on the attempt as Quixotic, the idea as prepos- 
terous, and the achievement, in these times, and in Syra- 
cuse, as no more likely than a miracle. I resolved, by 
the help of God, to put off smelling the breath of the 
cows and hearing Ponto squeal, till I should get the 
subscriptions. That it would be done so soon I did not 
venture to hope or imagine. I took the last subscrip- 
tion at two forty-five Friday afternoon, and at three 
o'clock had a meeting of the Trustees, and we elected 
a strong Building Committee. 

There were not only many amusing revelations and 
incidents in the process, but the sort of amazement and 
awe with which the bankers, merchants, and lawyers 
came to look upon me towards the close was entertain- 
ing to the last degree. I am told men pointed at me in 
the street as they would at the Wandering Jew, or Dr. 
Livingstone, or Caesar. To take $20,000 is just the 
thing to make the City open its eyes. Five years of spirit- 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 309 

ual labor or moral sacrifice would be nothing to that. 
God pity their souls ! 

Your birthday fell on the last of those anxious, 
crowded, intense days. There was time to ask God to 
bless you, — to grant you a full teachable and united 
flock, and to permit you to see so much of the fruit of 
your six faithful years of watching and working as it 
may seem to Him best that you should see. A great 
deal has come into your life within that time. In the 
natural course of things, how much more of the work- 
season is left for you than for me! 

We look forward now to your visit eagerly. 

Ever affectionately, 

F. D. H. 

Hadley Aug. 13, 1874. 
To H. S. W. 

Your letter came when I was in Rhode Island trying, 
with my Brother- Bishops, to make the abused Hymnal 
a little more acceptable. I trust we have made enough 
alterations and not too many, and of a kind to carry the 
Book through the Convention. But an assembly of 
men is an uncertain element, and nobody can ever 
know what it will do, especially if it comes to discussion. 

Did you ever see a " Parish Clambake " ? We were 
led out to one, one afternoon. It is one of the ghastly 
services of a half -christianized community to make up 
for their neglect of God's law, in putting the tithe into 
His Treasury, by a combination of frolic, traffic and 
religion, and so making out a support for the preaching 
of a mutilated Gospel. There were fine women and 
fine men; the spot was lovely; the sky was superb. 
But the chowder was gritty; the green corn was liter- 



310 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

ally wrapped in sackcloth and ashes ; there was a smack 
of mammon in the sauce ; and I was glad to get back 
to Watts and Doddridge, Keble and Ken. 

January 31, '75. 
Our Hospital affairs are going on smoothly. Mrs. 
Burnham makes an excellent impression. 1 Keble 
School is full. We have had a two days' Conference 
of our Diocese at Waterloo, with animating and hearty 
worship, stirring singing, and a dozen thoughtful papers 
on important practical topics, — so earnest and able 
as to make me proud of the intellectual and spiritual 
character of my Clergy. 

Early in his Episcopate, Bishop Huntington inaugu- 
rated the custom of holding yearly Conferences for the 
clergy and laity of the diocese. These occasions were 
full of interest to himself, and gave him an opportunity 
to impress upon those who worked under him the value 
he placed upon certain aspects of the sacred ministry. 
His purpose was threefold : to promote more thorough 
study of the scriptures and the Fathers, to deepen the 
spiritual life of the clergy, and to awaken greater mis- 
sionaiy zeal in the parishes. The preparation of written 
essays was intended not only to be a literary stimulus, 
which with his fine intellectual taste could not be depre- 
ciated, but still more a means of promoting wider read- 
ing and better acquaintance with the great exegetical 
writers of the day. His own mind, as has been already 

1 Mrs. Mary D. Burnham came from Boston, where she had been 
one of the devoted band of workers in Emmanuel Church, to take 
the position of Head of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Diocese and 
to be House-Mother of the Hospital. 



ENTRAxNCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 311 

indicated, was not inclined to discussion for the sake of 
argument, but rather for illumination through the ex- 
change of ideas and an extension of the range of sym- 
pathies. His respect for scholarship was profound, and 
one benefit sought in these gatherings was to give the 
younger men an opportunity to profit by the patient 
labor of those among them who had real knowledge to 
impart. It was his practice to close the interchange of 
thought with some suggestion of his own on the deeper 
lessons to be drawn, often arousing in his hearers, by 
his magnetic and quickening power, an inspiration 
which sent them home with a new spirit of consecration. 
Thus at one time, when the subject treated was the 
different aspects of the " Message, " he reminded them 
that all their words were spoken in the presence of 
Him who is alike the Master of the work and the 
Original of the Message, at another, on the theme of 
" Worship," he drew their thoughts upward to Christ 
as the one Fountain-head of all light and power and 
life. 

In March, 1879, he gave a Conscio ad clerum on 
"Preaching as it was in the original system of the 
Church, or the sermon of the Petrine period the pattern 
of the sermon-w^ork of after ages, as respects doctrine, 
method and spirit." 

The missionary meetings in connection with the 
Conferences were made the occasion of securing the 
best speakers to be obtained, and in this way the differ- 
ent Convocation districts and the rural parishes had 
the benefit of inspiring addresses from bishops and 
other workers in domestic and foreign fields. 

At the seventh annual Convention of the diocese, 
June 14, 1876, the Bishop said in his address: "Expe- 



?:; FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



vi<; 

-■- 



:ra :y ; :: ;: ::. 



to me lbs I wc shall never be furnished with a full i 
of evangelists and associate missioners till 
them among ourselves. We ought tfaeid 

t: : ining-school at the centre of the die 

with a regular corns Fstnd; s in the differ 

-rrments of scientific ai :oral theology i 

hot: m own scholars, with terms of prac:: 

rcise an rish ministers." In the f< ! 

Sepl - ao far realized that a so 

s renl : ~ ( vary Mission, not far from 
Bpisoo] nda nd St Andrew's Divinity 

S col ope: staff of teachers c g of the 

Bishop; Bev. C. P. Jennings, D-D . u Dean; Di I 
If. Chib Bi v. H. R. Lx-kwood. and others. 1 The 
students at _ restituted an Associate Mi—ion, 

and by this mean- ere sustained in 

par: us. 

Daring the summer B7( T - Huntington wu 
abroad, taking a walk:: s - S nd, and 

project 

1 In successioo tbe deans of St. Audi inity School were: 

(Carles P. Jennings. ^TD. Ike Be*. William D. Wflson, 

I) P.. I L D . L II D . :,ud Professor Emeritus of Cornell Cniver- 

wbo took charge November 1, 1886. and tbe Rev. Tbeodore 

K who became dean October 1, 1899. Tbe Bishop 

himself conducted classes and gave courses of lectures during some 

r. :.rt ::' >::. ::. =-rC>:r. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 313 

Hadley, August 10, '76. 
Many of my hours, of course, arc given to our Dio- 
cese and to the next year's work. The group of theo- 
logical students forms a feature of special interest, on 
other grounds than that of its novelty; and I hope my 
anxiety about it will not amount to a distrust of Provi- 
dence. Dr. Perry has asked me to preach his conse- 
cration sermon, Sept. 10, at Geneva. Thinking it over, 
I declined. There are those equally competent who 
prize and enjoy such opportunities. Four times I have 
stood back from such a preaching, feeling unequal to 
it. Am I getting old or lazy, or fastidious ? I never like, 
especially on such ceremonies, to discourse, unless be- 
forehand I am conscious of the strong afflatus and an 
absorbing subject. 

That same season it became necessary to raise a 
large sum for St. John's School, Manlius, and the 
Bishop's mind during the vacation was oppressed with 
the difficulty of meeting an obligation which no one but 
himself seemed disposed to assume. Generous friends 
within the diocese and without came to his assistance, 
however, and he wrote a little later, expressing his 
gratitude for the relief. 

Hadley, Sept. 1, '76. 

Dear James : — You will rejoice with me that last 
evening's mail brought the last $100 necessary to 
finish the St. John's subscription. Some of it has 
been in smaller sums, and almost as slowly and spar- 
ingly as the raindrops that have fallen since dog- 
days began. In spite of the dryness, this is a day of 
thanksgiving. 



314 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Some of the farmers are cutting up their corn. The 
carriage wheels rattle. The river, I never saw so low. 
But there is general health. We are wondering what 
the effect of our summer's recreation will be. God 
knows, and something depends, no doubt, on our- 
selves. 

Syracuse, Oct. 7, 1876. 
To E. V. D. 

The other Sunday I was on a visitation to one of my 
active and interested little Missions — " Willowdale," 
on Seneca Lake. A short time before the service, where 
1 was to confirm several young persons, the "first- 
fruits " of the Mission work, I had occasion to go to the 
small Church; and as I came out I met a very aged 
lady with a cheerful face, seated in an armchair, help- 
less, and carried to meet God in His House by the arms 
of two stout young farmers. I could only say, " Inter- 
cession ! " We bear one another to the mercy-seat, to 
the Saviour, to Peace. I must thank you for giving me a 
new occasion for this blessed office. If our prayers 
should be answered, and the tempted heart be snatched 
from the snare of the fowler, I hope you will let me 
know it that we may give thanks together. For I sup- 
pose thanks are as dear to our Lord as petitions; and 
we so often have to exclaim, ." Where are the nine? 
Were there not ten cleansed ? " 

Your letter shows that you keep close to the Master, 
— or rather that He keeps you close to Him. It is better 
to think of Him than even of our spiritual selves. 
Whether we are happy is not essential. It is essential 
only that we have Jesus in us, the hope of glory and a 
present life. 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 315 

Happy old Emmanuel days! Nor arc our present 
days less good in a different way. 

God grant you inward strength and light! 

Most affectionately and faithfully yours, 

F. D. H. 

The religious work of the Mission here referred to 
was especially dear to Bishop Huntington's heart. He 
always spoke with interest and appreciation of the op- 
portunity afforded him of becoming acquainted with it, 
and the devoted woman who gave her life to it, on the 
long drives when he accompanied her across the coun- 
try region between the lakes. It was her custom each 
Sunday, after service in the little church near her farm- 
house, to visit three Mission stations in succession, the 
faithful pony harnessed to a buckboard bringing her 
home at nine o'clock in the evening. 

In allusion to these expeditions, the Bishop wrote 
her once: "The Bible has a great deal about horses. 
Your nag ought to have a biography. How fine that is 
in Jeremiah xii. 5: 'If thou hast,' etc. ! " 

A presbyter writes, in a private letter some time after 
Bishop Huntington's death, to the author of the beauti- 
ful memorial sermon, "The Good Shepherd:" "In 
a special way I appreciated your description of his 
episcopate, its simplicity, its devotion, its rich giving 
of its best. Of this I could testify myself, living as I did 
on the very borders, and witnessing from across the line 
something of what he did and said. It was always a 
spiritual and intellectual feast-day when he made 
Geneva his headquarters for the visitations in the west- 
ern section of his diocese, and found a restful home in 
my own parish. I recall with joy and pride in him, the 



316 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

day when at the laying of a corner-stone in a little vil- 
lage across the lake, surrounded by a few hundred 
country folk, he made an address that would have 
stirred the hearts and lifted the minds of any congre- 
gation in the land." 






Syracuse, Nov. 27, '76. 
To Miss Bethia Huntington. 

My dear Sister: — We can gather to-morrow in lov- 
ing remembrance and imperishable love and undivided 
sympathy, if not in the outward presence ; and near 
to the mercy-seat, if not in sight of the old home. We 
shall think of you many times. Our circle will not be 
large. It being St. Andrew's Day, and our new Divinity 
School being called from that Apostle, we are to have 
a special Communion service in the morning. My Bos- 
ton visit was full of hearty greetings and pleasant things 
— though the weather was bad. Most of the time I was 
at Maiden. 

The Boston people like literary tournaments and 
evidently enjoyed the Church Congress. Unitarianism 
and Puritanism both were taken by surprise at the free- 
dom, boldness, freshness, and progressiveness of the 
discussions. It was a new revelation. As soon as the 
proceedings are printed together I will send you a copy. 

The head of the diocese did not confine his interest 
in the education of the youth in Central New York to 
the boys at St. John's School. He believed equally in 
using every means to train up girls to a noble Christian 
womanhood. 

The exercises of the first graduating class at Keble 
School proved to be the beginning of a long succession 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 317 

of those happy occasions, continued without break for 
twenty-four years, when in presenting the diplomas, 
the Bishop added words of fatherly counsel. His ad- 
dress on June 19, 1877, gave the history of the school, 
opened for boarding-scholars, six years before, by Miss 
Mary J. Jackson, its honored principal to the end. He 
said : " The name selected and conferred upon it, after 
much thought, was that attractive one which the school 
delights to bear, associated with the finest and most 
exalted traits of Christian life and character, with con- 
secrated scholarship, with poetry and charity, and with 
the reverent worship of the Church of God in our Eng- 
lish tongue." Keble School was in the near vicinity of 
the Bishop's residence, two of his daughters received 
their education there, and his relations with it were in- 
timate and sympathetic. He became well acquainted 
with many of the young girls, who came from homes 
in his diocese and from a distance, some of them 
daughters of his clergy. It was for two of such anniver- 
saries that he wrote the papers, afterwards published 
and widely read, " Good Talking and Good Man- 
ners; Fine Arts." The Keble daughters w^ho were 
privileged to attend the gatherings w^ill remember how 
the speaker contrived in brief space, and yet year after 
year with fresh grace and skill, to convey affectionate 
admonitions, a farewell to those for whom the day of 
parting had come, and a message of hope to carry 
with them for their future life. 

In September, 1877, the Bishop returned to Hadley, 
after the family had left, on his way from his diocese 
to the Triennial Convention in Boston. A few lines to 
his youngest son, express the indefinable influence of 
the scenes of his childhood, with those impressions of 



318 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

an autumn afternoon so beautifully portrayed in a 
poem which he himself often repeated with deep appre- 
ciation, "The Closing Scene," by Buchanan Read. 

Sept. 30, 1877. 

The old place never says so much as when it is stillest 
and most deserted. It seems to have a kind of tender, 
motherly pity for all of us who come and go. A slight 
yellowish haze just tempers the full light that covers 
the valley and the hills. The shadows are distinct. 
There is only the least tinge of purple on the woods. 
The river is like glass. Yesterday we took the boat out 
of the water at the ferry-place, and it now lies careened 
against the elm in front of the horse-barn. Carl walks 
about in stately wonder. I have just been over to the 
pasture, and presently Bethia is going with me behind 
the hill. 

In an account of the General Convention of 1877, in 
the pages of the " Gospel Messenger, " Bishop Hunt- 
ington expressed his constitutional distaste for exces- 
sive discussion. "The moral law for deliberative Bod- 
ies needs a special commandment: 'Thou shalt not 
talk over much.' Counting nothing but the cost in 
time and pecuniary expense, the Church and Boston 
Churchmen have just suffered a fearful and needless 
waste from the tongues of men who talk without excuse. 
The matter is not to be treated as a mere foible. The 
intemperance is a sin and ought to be treated as a sin 
not to be borne. A moderate degree of abstinence 
should be made a qualification for deputy-ship. If par- 
ler had been the final cause and sole function of Parlia- 
ment, King John might well enough have had his way, 



ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 319 

Stephen LangtoD have saved the expense of his jour- 
ney to Rome, and the great Karl Simon kept sheep in 
Leicestershire, instead of making crowns sit uneasy 
on royal heads. 

"After all, the holy kingdom of our Lord is best 
served and most set forward, not by legislative assem- 
blies but the faithful labors of his servants in their sev- 
eral spheres of toil. And his most honorable stewards 
and ambassadors are not those who figure conspicu- 
ously in assemblies but those who stand in their lot and 
do his will day by day." 

Three new congregations were by this time gathered 
in Syracuse, w T ith all of which the Bishop held especially 
close and affectionate relations, — St. John's, Calvary, 
and Grace. A beautiful stone edifice for the last-named 
parish was consecrated by him Feb. 9, 1877. Under 
the lead of Rev. Thomas E. Pattison and his de- 
voted wife, an earnest band of worshipers had already 
been drawn together. Calvary Church was opened 
for divine service on Christmas morning, 1877, and 
none were happier than the Bishop's own family, three 
of whom had been workers in the Mission from the be- 
ginning. He himself was the celebrant, assisted by his 
son, the minister in charge. In his owti w T ords in the 
" Gospel Messenger," " Thus in the merciful Provi- 
dence of God, the Bishop of the Diocese has a Free 
Church in bis own immediate pastorship and charge, 
at his own disposal, for the furtherance of the princi- 
ples of our doctrine, discipline and worship." 

The Lenten readings, " Helps to a Holy Lent," com- 
posed largely of selections, were so widely circulated 
that in 1876 a second volume, " New Helps," was issued, 



320 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

which contained a larger proportion of the Bishop's 
own writings. The following year the Bohlen Lectures, 
which he had delivered the preceding winter in Phila- 
delphia, were published under the title, " Fitness of 
Christianity to Man." 

In 1878 he issued a new volume of sermons, " Christ 
in the Christian Year and in the Life of Man; Ser- 
mons for Laymen's Reading." Of this he wrote to his 
eldest son, Sept. 17, 1877: "My volume is done and 
the proofs come rapidly. AYith some misgivings I hope 
it may be of use." 

Syracuse. Dec. 13. 1877. 

To A. L. W. 

My first Lecture of the four for Philadelphia is just 
done and I must work hard on the others. They will 
be on the argument for Christianity drawn from its fit- 
ness to the wants of man, — man as a being of active 
worship, thought, and culture. I doubt if you have no- 
ticed that I have been rash enough to make another 
book of sermons. If I were near by I should give your 
mother a copy, and hope for gentle judgment from her 
critical mind. 

Syracuse, Ash Wednesday, '79. 

Dear George: — One is impressed this morning 
with the thought that millions of men will pray to-day 
for spiritual gifts and for the Kingdom of our Lord; 
and that even in our own small Household three thou- 
sand ministers are setting themselves to Forty Day- of 
strenuous labor. Such a campaign ought to do some- 
thing to stay the religious decline and yield returns, 
visible or invisible. May God grant you your share. 






ENTRANCE ON THE EPISCOPATE 321 

June 27, 1879. 

To A. L. P. 

This has been a year of blessing, — hard work, but 
blessed work, and you will let me say, thankfully, that 
I come to the elose of it with as much vigor and fresh- 
ness of body and spirit as I ever knew, almost, in my 
life. People with such a constitution as mine ought to 
work. It must be w^hat they are made for. Our Con- 
vention was delightful. Except for my chronic lack of 
money, all seems to go w T ell outwardly, and except for 
the chronic lack of spirituality and self-sacrifice, all 
well inwardly. 

Sept. 27, '79. 

During the last two or three weeks of our stay at Had- 
ley we were watching over my dear Sister Bethia. I 
finally closed her eyes, on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 14, 
and we laid her precious body in the Hadley grave- 
yard on Tuesday. 

Her disease was not much prolonged. It was the 
end of a life of unswerving, unvarying, complete, in- 
genious self-sacrifice for those around her. She never 
had a fuss or an alienation, I am sure, with a human 
being. You can imagine how glad and grateful we all 
were that she fell asleep, as she would have asked, in 
her own room, the same where I w T as born. On the Sun- 
day before, I sat with her and we had a long talk of old 
times. I reminded her of my birth-time. She told me 
how delighted she was when she took me, a baby, into 
her arms, she being thirteen years old then. Among 
her last words were, "Good morning, my brother;" 
"A little while;" "Christ;" "Everlasting rest." Butshe 
was unconscious for some hours. Having cared for mo- 



3-2-2 



FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



ther and father, sisters and brothers, she saw them a 
pass, one by one. into the Eternal Peace, — and then si 
placed her own feet firmly on the stones of the brook, 
and went over. And now she is far up among the hills 
of God. But for the grace and mercy of God I could 
not hope to overtake her. She was the guardian spirit 
of the old Home, and how much we shall miss her there 
as long as we are suffered to go to it! 



CHAPTER X 



THE ROYAL LAW 



" Brethren, I have it in my commission to comfort the feeble-minded 
and to support the weak. You must needs go along with us." 

'To be ardent without affectation, enthusiastic with- 
out inconstancy, vigorous without assumption, cheer- 
ful without irreverence, equal to all occasions without 
courting either applause or opposition, is the perfect 
type of piety." These words Bishop Huntington wrote 
in the introduction to an English biography, 1 early in 
the years of his Episcopate. There could be no better 
description of traits which constituted a charm of his 
own disposition and which manifested themselves 
through the cares and vicissitudes of a long life devoted 
to the service of his fellow men. It has been seen in the 
records of his youth and manhood that he threw him- 
self with all his heart into plans and undertakings for 
the benefit of the world around him, lending the influ- 
ence of his voice and pen to movements in behalf of the 
suffering and the oppressed. Upon the platform his elo- 
quence was magnetic, but that side of his nature " which 
courted neither applause nor opposition " had little 
sympathy for public demonstrations or debate. Al- 
though this distaste increased with advancing years, he 
never failed to take a keen interest in the causes under- 

1 Memorials of a Quiet Life, by Augustus J. C. Hare. American 
Edition. 



3-24 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

lying social agitation or to participate in practical 
measures of reform. The decade after his sixtieth birth- 
day was perhaps the high-water mark of his energetic 
and eager efforts for the extermination of evil. No 
utterances of his on any subject were more ringing, 
more vehement, more in the spirit of the prophets of 
old than those on the relations of capital to labor, on 
the misuses of wealth and the decline of public moral- 
ity. But while he contended for social righteousness. 
his was not the nature to bewail or rebuke the sins of a 
community without attempting to set wrongdoers on 
the straight path. Soon after his removal to Syracuse 
he was called upon to serve at the head of a committee 
appointed at a citizens' meeting, to consider that spe- 
cial form of tolerated impurity, known as "the social 
evil." The printed report, which he prepared, dealt 
with this difficult subject in uncompromising loftiness 
of warning and meets the situation by direct counsel, 
incorporated in certain resolutions, one of which con- 
templated the immediate opening of a reformatory 
for girls. 

At this period such youthful offenders, even when 
still childlike in age and experience, were incarcerated 
in the same wing of the county Penitentiary with the 
debased and criminal of both sexes. Bishop Hunt- 
ington, with the exception of his son, was the only 
clergyman or layman who took steps to remedy this 
flagrant evil, in behalf of the neglected girls of the 
city. When the Shelter was opened in IS??, through 
the initiative of the Rev. James Huntington, the 
Bishop assumed the responsibility of the furnishini;. 
and stood behind its financial support from that time 
until the destructive fire in 1901, when friends rallied 



THE ROYAL LAW 325 

to its relief and placed it on a more permanent founda- 
tion. To the end of his life Bishop Huntington main- 
tained the religious services in the institution, largely 
through his private chaplains, oftentimes by his own 
ministration. 

Syracuse, May 7, 1878. 
Mr dear Wife: — Yesterday afternoon Mr. Ham- 
ilton took me out to the East side of the City to look for 
a good site for the "Shelter." We found two excellent 
spots, but whether we shall have the means to buy and 
build is not so clear. 1 Poor F. B. has gone from bad to 
worse, and at last to the police court. She has written 
me a piteous appeal and last evening her mother came 
to see me. This morning I go down to see Justice Mul- 
holland and think I shall try to get him to suspend sen- 
tence if she will go to the House of Mercy for a year. 

At a meeting of the White Cross Society, in New York, 
a letter from Bishop Huntington was received which 
was printed verbatim in a circular issued. Speaking of 
the strange apathy among Christian people on the sub- 
ject of social purity, he says: "Why are such progres- 
sive movements, full of the most beneficent spirit of 
our time, more promptly seized upon and pushed for- 
ward in the conservative habits of the old country, than 
in this land of liberty, where they are needed quite as 
much?" 

His protest was always raised, and aid in influencing 
legislation promptly given, against bills for the legal- 

1 A lot of land was presented, in a letter to the Bishop, offering her 
"widow's mite," by Mrs. Henry Raynor, and on this site the first 
building was erected, through gifts from Henry Daboll, of Memphis, 
Mrs. Horace White, and other friends of the work. 



FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

izing of vice, or in support of measures for the protec- 
tion of children, for the appointment of police matrons, 
for associations in behalf of discharged prisoners, and 
kindred efforts of humanity and amelioration. 

In his own diocese, two plague spots of moral cor- 
ruption caused him much concern: one was the then 
existing Free Love Community, on the old Oneida 
Reservation ; and the other the strong Pagan influence 
among the Onondaga Indians, living on their tribal 
lands just south of Syracuse. It was in protest against 
the openly avowed manner of life among the people of 
the Oneida Community, that he wrote, in February. 
1879, one of his most powerful productions, in defense 
of family life, with an arraignment of those by whom 
the laws of marriage were boldly defied. The resolu- 
tions with which the report closed were published, over 
the signatures of prominent men in church and state. 
The complete MSS., preserved among the Bishop's 
papers, has this endorsement in his own handwriting: — 

"My part in breaking up the Oneida Community. 
The man Xoyes became alarmed at what we were pre- 
paring to do by law, and fled, it was said, to Canada, 
in the night." 

With the disappearance of the leader the objection- 
able features of the establishment gave place to an in- 
dustrial organization, and the existence of a commu- 
nistic settlement of such a character in the midst of 
Christian civilization remains now one of the strange 
incidents of the past. 

For the benighted heathen living as aliens in the 
great Empire State, Bishop Huntington never ceased 
to labor, filled with commiseration for those descend- 
ants of the red man, separated by language and tradi- 



THE ROYAL I AW 327 

tion from improving influences while subjected to con- 
tact with the debased and designing of the community 
around them; dependent like children for protection 
upon the state and yet controlled by the arbitrary rule 
of their own chiefs. 

In 1885, in a letter to a Syracuse journal, Bishop 
Huntington recalled his earliest visit, thirty years be- 
fore, to the Onondaga Reservation, "when that sweet- 
hearted philanthropist, the Rev. Mr. May, of Syracuse, 
took me out there, as I was traveling, and we went to 
the schoolhouse, and old LaForte came in to receive 
a message from the Massachusetts Society for Propa- 
gating the Gospel among the Indians of North Amer- 
ica." When he came again, in 1869, the new Bishop was 
received at " the castle " by members of his own com- 
munion, gathered in under the ministrations of the old 
diocese of Western New York. For this little flock, 
and to carry the gospel among the unconverted of the 
tribe, Bishop Huntington established a permanent 
Mission, with church, school and mission house, mak- 
ing provision for its regular support through the Wo- 
man's Auxiliary of Central New York. He himself 
became personally acquainted with these simple folk, 
visiting them and listening with patient attention when 
they brought their troubles to him; aiding especially 
in plans for the education of the children, some of whom 
were sent to Carlisle and Hampton. One of the most 
beautiful prayers which he ever wrote out was for these 
stray sheep in the wilderness. But he did not rest with- 
out repeated attempts to secure better conditions on 
the whole Reservation. 

The Hon. Horatio Seymour wrote to a Syracuse 
paper : " Bishop Huntington beyond any person I know 



328 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

has given his time and labor to improve the Indians on 
the Onondaga Reservation. If I understand his opin- 
ions they are that the land should be held by each occu- 
pant in fee, but that the owners should have no right to 
sell their interests ; that by this plan each family would 
have motives for making improvements on their lands 
and for making them productive by systematic indus- 
try. They would know that their property would go to 
their children ; and yet as none could sell, they would 
not be cheated out of their interest. It strikes me that 
this would be a wise and a humane change of the law." 
In a letter to the New York "Evening Post," Bishop 
Huntington said of the system of government among 
the Onondagas : " Petty and puerile as it is when com- 
pared with almost any civil economy known to modern 
times, it is yet capable of a great deal of injustice and 
does not waste its opportunity. The tribal government 
consists chiefly of a complicated chieftainship in various 
grades, the offices being partly conferred by election 
and partly hereditary, the line of transmission running 
mostly through the mother's veins. The superior chiefs, 
ignorant men, form a close, irresponsible, despotic cor- 
poration or oligarchy. The lands, held in common, are 
portioned out arbitrarily under their direction to fam- 
ilies and individuals, for a term of years, on a plan 
which gives easy play to caprice, cupidity, cruelty and 
revenge. The income of certain stone quarries falls 
into the same greedy hands." On another occasion, he 
adds : " Convinced that a breaking up of the tribal re- 
lation was absolutely necessary to civilization or thrift, 
I have labored to bring it about; have written and 
spoken and been interviewed for it, have been to Albany 
and argued it before a special Committee of the Legis- 



THE ROYAL LAW 329 

lature, and have pleaded with the Governor more than 
once, and am at this moment in correspondence with 
him." Thus the Bishop wrote in 1882, and the tale 
might have been repeated for the next twenty years. 

At the age of eighty-three he attended for the last 
time one of the conferences in behalf of the Indians at 
Lake Mohonk, and read a paper which was as vigor- 
ous, as far-seeing and as weighty as those of his earlier 
years. After carefully setting forth the situation he 
said : " So it will continue to be, substantially, till the 
people choose officers and law-makers of such disin- 
terested and impartial statesmanship as to set reso- 
lutely about interpreting and modifying fairly the 
treaty obligations under the screen of which — for it is 
nothing more than a screen — immorality, corruption, 
with idleness and ignorance, plead a flimsy excuse and 
ply their infamous traffic. In my judgment the apathy 
of successive administrations at Albany toward the 
vicious Pagan practices at Onondaga is without de- 
fense, as the practices are without decency. There 
should be without delay a thorough and searching and 
complete investigation of the history of these compacts 
between the Indian chiefs and the state of New York, 
not, in this case, the government in Washington. If it 
should prove that the treaty terms have been repeat- 
edly broken by either party and are only a stumbling- 
block to reform, then they are a scandal. That search- 
ing inquiry should be made by a commission having a 
heart in the business, and their report and its facts 
should be seen by the legislature, the executive, and 
the newspaper press. Citizenship, severalty in land, 
it is quite true, will not do everything; it will not create 
character, but it will yield two benefits, positive and 



330 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

negative : it will add dignity to manhood in a sense of 
personal responsibility and a civic consciousness; it 
will protect domestic order and just dealing between 
neighbor and neighbor and restrain crime." 

Among the many occasions when Bishop Hunting- 
ton pleaded for the Indians, from the Poncas on the 
western lands to his own scanty remnant of the great 
Iroquois, none was more impressive through associa- 
tions of the past than that on which he spoke in the vil- 
lage just across the river from the old homestead where 
he was born, and in sight from his window. The cele- 
bration at Hatfield was in commemoration of an event 
during the harvest season of 1676, when a band of In- 
dians fell upon the settlement, while the men were in 
the fields, and carried nineteen people, old men, women, 
and children, into captivity. 

The details of the final rescue and ransom, after 
many difficulties, by two dauntless men, and the 
joyful return, all living but three, with two children 
born after the long march to Canada, form one of 
the thrilling tales of the Connecticut Valley. The 
orator of the anniversary gathering, Bishop Hunting- 
ton, was the great-grandson of a military captain 
slain by the same savage hands at the battle of Lake 
George. In the opening of his address he referred 
to this ancestor and remarked playfully to the good 
folk of Hatfield : " It was no fault of mine that he made 
the house I live in, in summer, over the river, to turn 
its back to you and its face to the east. That way I 
see the sun rising, this w T ay I see friendly human habi- 
tations, the cultivated acres of an intelligent industry, 
a church-spire and many a splendid array of clouds 
and sky, as the sun goes down; in the evening the 



THE ROYAL LAW 331 

cheerful lights of peaceful homes. Sometimes I hear 
the strains of martial music, sometimes voices along 
the streets; occasionally, on the third night of July, 
such sounds as might have come from the Mohawks 
or Xipmucks or Xarragansetts of 1676; sometimes 
a hymn of praise from the lips of thankful worshipers. 
Of your church-bell — most of all its Sunday evening 
tones — I should fail completely to make you under- 
stand or to feel all that it has been to me, for seventy 
years, and all that it is to me still, in tenderness, in 
pathos, in association with a hallowed and blessed past 
in 'thoughts' which, as Wordsworth says, 'do often 
lie too deep for tears.' It blends in my memory with 
the living voice of my mother, my revered father, 
brothers and sister who rest in the Hadley burial- 
ground, I alone of them left behind. You on this side 
do not know that in coming over the water between 
us, the notes of that bell take somewhat of a mysteri- 
ous quality of musical sweetness, which I always 
miss as soon as I leave the boat on the western bank." 
Other reminiscences of the old days followed, and then 
the speaker, with a change of tone, enforced the deeper 
lesson of the day's harrowing memories. 

" After what we have heard of the Red Man's 
atrocities, — our minds filled and sensibilities lacerated 
with this actual savagery, may I venture to enter a 
Christian plea for him and beg you to look a moment 
at the other side of the picture ? For there is another 
side. There certainly is. Savage or human, brute or a 
soul, the Indian is not merely a creature of the past. 
In this great leading Nation of ours he is a present and 
living element, a responsibility, a problem, a trust; 
for he is a brother-man. About 300,000 are in our 



332 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

States and Territories to-day, and in the day of judg- 
ment God Almighty will say, ' Where is thy brother ? ' 
Nay, it is the day of Judgment and He is saying that 
now. The extent of difficulty or resistance to Christian- 
ity in any heathen people is the measure of its power, 
and if there is any Race or Nation worse, darker, 
drearier, or wasting faster, there precisely is where the 
Gospel ought first to reach out its hand, and lift its 
voice, to heal, to bless, to save." 



Hadlet, Mass., August 24. 
St. B's Day. 

To H. S. W. 

My dear Friend: — It is worth while to know that 
you have missed something, and care enough for it 
to look it up, and that something one of my poor 
hurried letters, which never seem to say half what 
they ought to, or half they mean. 

The summer is ending. How short, how bright, 
how intensely summer-like it has been! If it has 
brought rest or healing to your spirit or body I am 
thankful. With your children and your mother, — 
the spirit of youth and the spirit of age, — there must 
have been many quietly and rationally happy hours, 
not wholly saddened by the memory of joys past and 
old home vanished. u There remaineth " another 
M Rest n with no shadowy remembrances, — another 
House, from which "they go no more out," — a sum- 
mer on the everlasting hills without storm and without 
end. Meantime the alternations of the seasons of our 
northern climate, of stillness and labor, heat and 
cold, seem to me to add to the interest of life. And I 
always find that when the first autumnal colors and 



THE ROYAL LAW 333 

half-lights steal into the woods and the sky, a readi- 
ness for work returns. It has been a great relief to 
me that there was no necessity of going to Lambeth, 
and that we could have our stay here, as usual, un- 
disturbed. During July our oldest son, with his wife, 
and two little grandchildren, were here. Various 
other friends have come and gone, — Bishop Williams 
among them. For the last fortnight, Ruth having 
gone to make visits about Boston, the rest of us have 
had a lovely carriage-ride in Southern Vermont. 
James, who always wants his walk, was on his feet, 
making each day the distance our strong horse drew 
us in the carryall. So we jogged on among the Green 
Mountains and their valleys, by running brooks of 
water, through forests, with countless beautiful 
openings, far-reaching views, and shady nooks. At 
evening we came together. So we traveled more than 
two hundred miles, slowly and delightfully. It did us 
all a great deal of good, tho' I did not need it. 

Last evening we drove up to our own door again, 
— the dearest spot on earth to me. Next week I have 
got to go down to hot and dusty New York. We shall 
hardly get to Syracuse before Sept. 24th., as James 
expects me to ordain him Deacon on St. Matthew's 
Day at his brother's Church in Maiden. You will 
think of us that Ember week, will you not, while on 
your knees ? 

Immediately after his ordination to the diaconate, 
Rev. James Huntington took charge of Calvary 
Church, Syracuse, receiving Priest's Orders in May, 
1880. In the four years of his ministry there, he lived 
at his father's house, and, besides parish work, la- 



334 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

bored earnestly in behalf of souls among the inmates 
of the Penitenitary and the county Poorhouse, giv- 
ing active service also in the establishment of the 
Shelter, of the Bureau of Labor and Charities, and 
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 
During the period of his residence at home, the family, 
with the exception of the eldest son, were all together. 
The first break came when considerations of health 
required the second daughter to go abroad for change 
and study. Her older sister accompanied her to Ger- 
many and remained away through the following sum- 
mer. 
rp A T -p January, 1SS1. 

A. and R. sailed away from us last Thursday. I 
saw them off. With our untraveled ways and close 
domesticity this is a hard separation. But the voyagers 
belong more to God than to us. He is as near them 
on sea as land, and in one land as in another. He is 
stronger, wiser, better than we are. Why should we 
complain or fear ? 

After bidding them good-by I went to Boston to 
give the " Instruction," and to meet the Girls' Friendly 
Society, and to see our children and some old parish- 
ioners, and then to Hadley to spend a quiet Sunday 
and rest. I came back to New York and we had 
our first business meeting of the Committee on the 
Liturgy. We laid out our work peaceably. May the 
Holy Spirit save us from ruining the Prayer-book, or 
the Bible, for then what would be left ? 

rp TT o wja Hadley, July 20, '81. 

My dear Friend: — How faith gets its confirma- 
tions as we go on living our life under the Hand of 



THE ROYAL LAW 335 

God, guided, delivered, fed, comforted, — we and 
our children that He has given us. 

You justify me by your kind inquiry in speaking 
particularly of our own family. George is here with 
his three little boys and they enliven our stillness. I 
want you to see the book on which he has been mod- 
estly but laboriously engaged for several years, — 
ever since Bishop Alexander's superb Bampton 
Lectures on the Psalms were issued, — now just pub- 
lished, — "The Treasury of the Psalter." 1 I know it 
will interest you, for it tells much of the uses of the 
Psalms in the old Church offices, and opens the 
Scripture and glorifies Christ. You speak of my dear 
boy James. You will observe how kindly and affec- 
tionately his work at Calvary was recognized by the 
Convention, for I have sent you the " Messenger." He 
feels, as I do, that we ought to have in this country an 
order of Evangelists corresponding to that of St. 
John in England, and not English. For years he has 
felt himself called to some such separated and spe- 
cial work — a Community life. With two others who 
share the same aspiration and consecration, he is 
contemplating the starting of such a House and 
Mission and Order in New York. They may begin 
this Fall. I do not dissuade him, but don't you 
see how the very possibility of parting with him 
rends my heart? He must follow the highest lead- 
ing. 

1 The Treasury of the Psalter : an aid to the better understand- 
ing of the Psalms in their use for Public and Private Devotion ; 
compiled by the Rev. George P. Huntington and the Rev. Henry 
Metcalf. 



330 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Sept. 4. 1SS1. 
Noeth-Sttdt. Sunday afternoon. 

To his Daughter en - Germany. 

The anniversary of your mother's wedding. 

A still air and the brooding sky full of mystery and 
comfort, very beautiful and very tender. 

My diarist Ruth: — I don't write you much. I 
know: and you know the reason. As chroniclers and 
reporters, and indeed as commentators too. your 
mother and sister do their work so constantly and so 
well that I could really hardly mention one fact 
without risk of repetition. .And then the days and 
nights and weeks and years of ceaseless correspond- 
ence do make one ready to accept a tolerable excuse 
for letting the pen lie. You are very good with your 
letters, and I think you have just favored me with the 
best you have ever written. — that from Zurich, with 
it- vivid description and entertaining incidents. 

We all suppose that it is unavoidable that you should 
feel a little heart-sinking at sending A. off homeward 
and turning your face eastward and going back to 
lonely work again. We would spare you that if we 
could. But God does not spare us hard things. — 
because He loves us. and many things which would 
be hard and harder are made easy by it. You have 
met this trial with your usual courage. I am sure. — 
and will find your comfort and contentment, as we all 
often do. by plunging into tasks and keeping the 
mind busy. 

Just now I too am a little homesick, as the summer 
ends, and Tuesday I must go back alone to Syiacu 
etc.. for a week, and afterwards shall have only about ten 
days here. My inordinate love for tins place makes this 



THE ROYAL LAW 337 

about as sharp an annual cross as I have to take up; 
but I trust I am thankful for a season so full of bless- 
ings as this has been. 

We have all been in the garden, and Mary gave me a 
buttonhole bouquet of pansies and a sprig of lemon 
verbena. I send specimens. Since then we have been 
out, since the Evening Service, looking at the turkeys, 
the Jerseys, and the kittens. 

It would be better if you were here. How much 
better ! 

Mary is singing at the piano. It is too dark to write. 
Love and blessing, dear. 

F. D. H. 

Syracuse, Dec. 19, '81. 
To H. S. W. 

My dear good Friend : — How pleasant it was to see 
your hand again and how more than pleasant to read 
your words of affectionate remembrance. The copy 
of the "Psalter" will reach you, no doubt, by mail. I 
am glad you want it, and I believe you will prize it, 
finding in it something to study as well as to enjoy. I 
have watched the whole making of it, in the four or five 
years past. George is retiring in his work, but thorough 
in his scholarship and reverent in spirit. 

James, dear boy, has gone on his way, as he believed 
for years God called him. With two young Priests of 
about his own age, filled with the same purpose, both 
of whom have spent some time at Cowley, he has taken 
an old, cheap house, in the lower part of New York, 
near the East river, in connection w T ith a Mission 
partly German, started by the Sisters of St. John the 
Baptist. 



338 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

There they are, living and working together, in much 
meditation and prayer, seeking to prepare, if they may, 
the way of the Lord, by being Missioners in the Church 
at large. They have formed a new Order, — " The Order 
of the Holy Cross," — with Bishop Potter's approval, 
and with Dr. Houghton for Director. You will imagine 
the anguish of giving him up here, where I wanted him 
so much. But how could I hold him back, — knowing 
his heart, seeing what he has done for me, and fully be- 
lieving with him that the Church sorely needs both a 
standard of holy living in the Ministry and a leaven of 
Evangelization supplementing our miserable, halting, 
half-secular Parochial system. I asked them to come 
here, but they thought New York the better place to 
begin, — I hope they may come here yet. They live 
in poverty, chastity, and obedience, — with bare floors, 
no tablecloths, scanty furniture, plain food, and seem 
content. I went and celebrated with them one morning, 
slept there in a cot, and we consecrated the different 
rooms with prayers from the "Priest's Prayer Book." 
Pray for them. 

We plod on here, as busy as we can be, every day, 
with more calls, lines of labor, combinations and per- 
sonal cares than we have wealth and wisdom. It is not 
unhappy work with all its shortcomings. 

A. came home to us in October, and assures us that 
she left R. really better. She spends the year at Leip- 
sic, in music. The passion for travel does not develop 
in me yet. A. reads to us her notes in Spain, Africa, 
Italy, France, the Tyrol, and I listen gladly and then 
creep back thankfully to my own study. 

Your loving ex-Bishop, 

F. D. H. 



THE ROYAL LAW 339 

Syracuse, April 14, 1882. 

To A. L. P. 

What a full and bright and blessed season it has been 
for the whole Church ! Both Lent and Easter have great 
power in drawing people to the true Fold. Lent inter- 
ests and attracts the sober and devout, showing them 
that our system is scriptural and searching. The great 
Feasts draw the multitude. Our Cause grows steadily. 
The Ritual extravagance and sentimentalism and fancy- 
work have hindered it somewhat, but that check will 
not be permanent, if we are wise and patient, and if 
the bulk of our strong men keep the via media, as we 
may reasonably expect. The gain is steady. 

Hadley, Aug. 29, '82. 

My dear James : — Your Sunday rain did not 
reach us here. It was, all through, a dark, brooding, still, 
pathetic, heart-breaking day, with a constant expecta- 
tion of drops that did not fall. I was at home and most 
of the time out of doors. Probably nobody can know or 
tell what this dear old place is to me, or what share it 
has had and still has, by its silent, touching, healing 
power, in the moulding and preservation and consola- 
tion of my life. It is peopled w T ith living companions at 
every nook and turn, unseen, gentle, solemn, soothing 
and gracious. It is next to the Bible and the Church. 
I read Ruth's and other glowing descriptions of the 
sublimities and glories of the world; and then I sit at 
my North window, and stroll over the farm, and thro' 
the woods, and am satisfied, and thank God. 

This and the character and lives of my children, 
and the harmony of my Diocese, are the chief themes 
of my personal thanksgiving. 



340 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Last evening they all went to Mt. Warner by moon- 
light. Thursday there is a breaking-up and your mother 
and I shall be left alone. I think I may take her for a 
day or two to Warwick. It seems there is another boy 
at Maiden. I suppose they hoped for a girl, but a new 
human soul and body are precious, any way. 

Syracuse, Jan. 19, 1883. 
To the Same. 

The years fly, the last always the shortest. More 
and more as I go on, this life seems to me only getting 
ready to live. All seems tentative, provisional, unsatis- 
factory, and so prophesies another world, where we 
shall "see" not "as through a glass." 

This throws some light on the present weakness and 
pain, loneliness and disappointment. "What I do" 
says our Lord, "thou knowest not now, but thou shalt 
know hereafter/' To comprehend the mysteries of the 
life we are living now, would provide an intellectual 
Heaven in itself. But we want more than that. The 
heart needs a Heaven too, and finds it in Christ. 

In 1880 the Bishop asked his clergy to attend a gath- 
ering or Retreat, the first in the diocese, at St. John's 
School, Manlius, during the absence of the pupils in 
their winter vacation. In his letter of invitation he said : 
" Under a conviction that one of the greatest needs of 
our common work is deeper and stronger religious life 
in ourselves, the Bishop invito the clergy to a season 
of retirement, common and private devotion, and spirit- 
ual meditation." 

The addresses given by him at one of these occa- 
sions, in the winter of 1883, were afterwards written 



THE ROYAL LAW 341 

out and delivered by request before the students of the 
General Theological Seminary. He wrote to his son 
George: "If plain speaking will make them do it, 
the young men ought to ponder what is before them 
and go below the surface of the profession." A paper 
is preserved bearing the individual signature of each 
student, expressing grateful acknowledgment for the 
lectures and asking the privilege of having them pub- 
lished for their future use in the ministry. They were 
printed with the title, " Personal Christian Life in the 
Ministry." 

Philadelphia, Oct. 14, '83. 
The General Convention. 

To Rev. George P. Huntington. 

It is not to be spoken of aloud — but I suppose I have 
got to write the Pastoral Letter. It seems to have been 
so arranged within and without the Committee. To 
be the voice of this Church to the people, at this time, 
is an awful task and an awful trust. One must be judged 
of God and criticised of men accordingly. I shall need 
your prayers. 

In his address to the Diocesan Convention, delivered 
in June, 1884, after a recounting of the events of the past 
year's labors in the Episcopate, the consecrations of 
churches, ordinations to the sacred ministry; and 
dwelling upon the prosperity of St. John's and Keble 
schools, the district organization of the Woman's Aux- 
iliary to the Board of Missions, gratifying instances of 
the canceling of parochial indebtedness, renewed zeal 
in the repair and adornment of church buildings, 
Bishop Huntington emphasized the deeper satisfaction 



342 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

to be felt in an increased spirituality: "a quickened 
sensibility to all devotional impressions, a deeper long- 
ing for sacramental helps and ministries. In many Par- 
ishes now, to which I return annually, and in more and 
more of them, I find at least a few disciples thus walk- 
ing by faith, and not the less but the more true to every 
practical duty, for frequent communions with their 
ascended Redeemer." He continued with an admoni- 
tion to those who would grudge to others a spiritual 
sustenance for which they themselves hungered not, and 
words of sympathy for the Shepherd, "with none to 
watch and work with him, none to wake early or make 
sacrifices where he is groaning in spirit to lead the way." 
Other subjects treated in a grave and solemn tone, were 
a better provision for the clergy; the worldliness often 
manifested in the manner of obtaining parish support ; 
the alarming increase of vice among neglected children 
of both sexes; with a commendation of the Girls' 
Friendly, the White Cross, and Christian Purity so- 
cieties. The lengthy and searching address closed with 
the following personal Apologia, the only one that we 
find in the whole course of Bishop Huntington's Con- 
vention charges, but none the less significant in the 
characterization of a mind counted at this period one 
of the greatest and most influential in the American 
Church. 

My dear friends, we have been laboring to- 
gether, as Bishop and Diocese, fifteen years. Will you 
allow me to share with you once for all one burden to 
which it would be unmanly to allude very often ? I 
ask the Brethren to tell me candidly and freely if they 
see any way whereby I can be more serviceable to them 



THE ROYAL LAW 343 

or their people. Every year makes duty more impera- 
tive as it makes the time shorter. 

All I can give is the attempt. So many attempts 
have been unavailing that I dare promise nothing 
more. The feeble hope which for a time I indulged 
in myself that my public services would after awhile 
become a source of satisfaction to me or much profit 
to others is less and less sanguine. Those of you who 
know what it is to find the disappointments of the chief 
aspiration of life growing keener as life wears away, 
know also that one gets no powers to go on at all, 
without flinching or retreating, except in God alone. 
I suppose others may be able to say with me that 
they scarcely can recall a day since youth when they 
would not willingly have given the endeavor up alto- 
gether if it had not seemed cowardly or disobedient. 
What it is of far more moment for me to consider, is 
your advantage and the Master's Will. By whatever 
means then I can make up for failures past, I am the 
more concerned to lay out for that end all the time 
remaining and the strength God may give. 

Two years later, during the General Convention 
held at Chicago, Bishop Huntington wrote to his 
wife : — 

"It does not appear from the action and spirit of 
our House that any legal permission will be given to 
Bishops to retire at the age of seventy. Personally, 
I confess I should look to a discharge from one im- 
portant part of my official tasks, three years hence, 
with a great sense of relief — the preaching. From 
the duties of counsel, correspondence, administration, 
I do not shrink, painful as some of them are. Nor, 



344 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

with my unusual health and endurance, should I 
think it right to ask exemption from the discomfort 
of travel. But at the same time the obligation of 
public speech, the cost of the delivery of sermons 
especially, are so irksome as to be almost unendurable. 
I scarcely can preach, anywhere, to any congregation, 
large or small, cultivated or illiterate, without thinking 
somebody else would do more good in my place, that 
the heart and consciences and lives of the hearers 
might be better benefited, and that those hearers, 
even those who are nearest to me and love me most, are 
really disappointed. So my usefulness is perhaps 
diminished, and yet where is the remedy?" 

This dissatisfaction, amounting at times to dis- 
tress, was one which the subject himself connected, 
in some moods of self-analysis, with a general reserve 
of disposition, — a preoccupation and absence of 
mind, giving an impression of coldness which yet 
melted instantly into peculiar gentleness towards 
any one who came to him for relief or sympathy. 
These phases of dejection increased with age, partly, 
no doubt, from physical exhaustion, and because, with 
the cessation of activity, the inherited strain of Puritan 
melancholy gained the ascendency. The peculiarity 
showed itself in his disinclination to preach at public 
occasions and during the meetings of the Triennial 
Convention, when visiting bishops are always sought 
for by the city parishes. He had all his life, quite 
apart from any personal feeling, an unwillingness to 
encourage the idea of a preacher being followed 
after, through any motive but a desire for spiritual 
help. To a great extent, however, he did feel himself 
inadequate to meet the expectations of his audience. 



THE ROYAL LAW 345 

Frobably, he was, as he confessed, inclined to be 
over fastidious in his idea of literary work, but he 
was also really convinced that his words failed to 
reach those for whom they were intended, through 
some lack of force. One gets a glimpse of this way 
of looking at his own life and its demands in a letter 
written not long after the above. 

To A. S. T. 

Age probably has something to do with it, but at 
any rate I find myself more and more inclined to 
subordinate the individual in relation to the great 
causes, plans, and orderings of Providence. Where 
I work, and what I say and do, as to its importance 
and effect, seem to be of diminishing moment. Such 
are the multitudes, the forces, the voices, the ideas, 
the movements, the competent persons in every de- 
partment, that one is more and more apt to say, "It 
is no matter; what I do, or what I don't do, will get 
done and better done than I could do it." This may 
run, to be sure, to inaction and the repression of enter- 
prise. We must keep pegging away. To work steadily 
and hard at something is clearly both duty and com- 
fort; but what comes of it, — that is another matter, 
and hardly our concern. 

Syracuse, April 6, 1885. 
To A. L. P. 

Like you I find myself in no growing sympathy with 
the extravagancies of ceremonial. Whether there is 
false doctrine under them or not, it is often extremely 
difficult to find out. At any rate it is associated with 
them. And the whole thing is so palpably an imitation, 



346 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

an exotic, a copy, with no natural roots in our national 
life or domestic training, that it is extremely difficult 
to keep off a sense of affectation, of unreality. I try 
to do it, — and to see both sides, — to judge fairly 
and largely, to make allowance for the inborn di- 
versities of taste and sensibility, and I believe that by 
great toleration, great width, great patience, the 
Body of Christ may retain its Catholic character and 
be true to its Head — include variety without losing 
unity, and so gather in the more souls. We can fall 
back for our comfort on the grand promise: "The 
Lord reigneth" and "changeth not." And He will 
come again. 

In the autumn of 1885 a new edifice was erected for 
St. Paul's Church, Syracuse. The Bishop's relations 
with the parish, and with its rector, Rev. Henry R. 
Lockwood, had always been close and affectionate; 
but it was an unlooked-for event when a proposal 
was made him to take it for his Cathedral. As the 
oldest and largest congregation in the See City there 
seemed much that was appropriate in an arrange- 
ment which placed its beautiful and spacious structure 
at the disposal of the diocese for solemn gatherings, 
while its chapel was a suitable place for the daily 
prayers of St. Andrew's Divinity School. Bishop 
Huntington had all his life dreamed of a great city 
church, with seats free to all worshipers, frequent 
and inspiring services, and ministrations to the stranger, 
the lowly, and the outcast. When he had his pastoral 
staff, a personal gift, affixed to the bishop's chair in 
the chancel at St. Paul's, he hoped much for the future 
and looked forward to the time when the sanctuary 



THE ROYAL LAW 347 

would be consecrated as a people's church. Years 
passed and he found that the prospect of the debt 
being discharged did not brighten, and that such 
changes as he deemed essential to make it a cathedral 
in any true sense were not likely to take place. So he 
quietly withdrew, after notifying the wardens and 
vestry; but this was not without repeated efforts to 
remove the financial burden. In 1889, the year when 
he completed the twentieth of his Episcopate, he sug- 
gested that in place of other commemoration a signal 
method of celebrating that epoch in the history of the 
diocese would be the lifting of the indebtedness upon 
St. Paul's, with its consecration at the annual Con- 
vention. Thus he wrote to the officers of the church, 
assuring them that "anything within my power, even 
to a sacrifice, would be eagerly done to raise us up 
into that liberty and righteousness in the sight of 
God and men." 

It has been already said that, however much Bishop 
Huntington's heart and longing aspiration turned to 
the opportunities of a city parish, there was no place 
where his office as Chief Pastor gave him more satis- 
faction than in his ministration to the small flocks 
scattered through the remote villages of his charge. 
One who belonged to such a humble but earnest 
household of the faith recalls the unlooked-for plea- 
sure which not infrequently cheered the worshipers, 
when, instead of the expected lay-reader or casual 
supply, the Bishop himself would drive up on a Sun- 
day morning, coming in his own conveyance across 
the hills. 

Within the round of stations under the care of the 
Associate Mission in Syracuse, he always stood ready 



348 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

to fill a vacancy, and, especially at Easter and other 
great feasts, to celebrate the Eucharist. It was this 
encouragement of his personal presence, sometimes 
just in a moment of doubt or despair, that kept alive 
the patience and hope of the few faithful communi- 
cants. 

While Frederic Huntington was rector of Emman- 
uel Church, four of his near kindred passed away : the 
father, two brothers, Charles and Theophilus, and the 
eldest sister, Mrs. Fisher, all leaving families and 
descendants. The next eldest, William, after minister 
ing in the Unitarian denomination, settled on a farm 
in Wisconsin, where his children had their early edu- 
cation. Late in his life he entered the Episcopal 
Church, and became a missionary in South Dakota, 
receiving Deacon's Orders from the hands of his 
youngest brother, Bishop Huntington. He closed a 
happy old age, with sons and a daughter near him, at 
Amherst, Massachusetts. The last surviving brother, 
Theodore, had spent his days on or near the an- 
cestral estate at Hadley, but finally removed to his 
wife's birthplace in Connecticut, where he died. 

Eastford, Nov. 17, '85. 
To A. D. P. 

We have just come back from the place where, in 
the bright sunshine of an Indian summer afternoon, 
and near a running stream of clear water, we have 
laid Theodore's dear body. His life ended after a 
decline almost without pain, and so gradual that it 
was difficult to tell when he began to die. There was 
no cloud on his faith and no fear of the great change. 
He waited for it in the gentle patience and holy hope 



THE ROYAL LAW 349 

that we have seen in him through all his quiet and 
unspotted life. 

You see that I am left alone, the last of the eleven. 
God seems to see that it needs more time to prepare 
me than it does the rest of them for the Home "from 
which they go no more out." 

Syracuse, Dec. 22, '85. 
To Rev. George Huntington. 

Pilgrims' Day, — but the Apostles are older than 
the Pilgrims. 

We all wish you a bright Feast, my dear George, at 
the Holy Night and the Great Birthday. The box I 
think is on its way. The aunts and grandmother get a 
great deal of gentle excitement and wholesome exercise 
out of the nephews and grandsons. I am quite discour- 
aged by their superior zeal, and shrink out of the race, 
contenting myself with a message of love and imaginary 
kisses and a cheque for you. I wish I could look in 
on your circle and see the fun and hear the hum. 

The New York Mission seems to be another great 
step forward in Church-life. If the life could only 
be deepened too ! 

The Cathedral has been an unexpected tho' greatly 
desired gift. The Resolutions were made large enough 
to give me all the liberty I shall need, I think. There 
is general cordiality. Some things are not as they 
should be, — as to sittings, the debt, but there is an 
opportunity for much to be done, — new duties, — a 
new accountability, so I need to be prayed for. 

To-morrow I go to the Funeral of Mr. Pierpont, 
our chief benefactor. How I shall miss him! and 
who will take his place ? His money and friendship 






350 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 



have carried me through a good many hard places 
The young men don't seem to be quite such Church- 
men as their fathers. 

With much love and blessing for each and all, 

Affectionately, 
Your Father. 

Syracuse, Feb. 6, '86. 
To a Friend in trouble. 

Let me pity your mother-heart. I can go with you, 
and for you, to Him who knows all and with infinite 
tenderness sees the past, the present, the future. 

Wait patiently for Him! How well I remember 
Louise Carey singing those four words in the choir of 
"Emmanuel" in Boston, repeating them till there 
was no more room for any other thought in my soul, 
with her wonderful, pleading intonation ! 

It is late Saturday rright. The day, the week, and 
many days, have been full of cares and anxieties. 
But, I believe I am ready for to-morrow. I wish I 
could have your prevailing prayers for my sermon at 
the " Cathedral " — where there is so much to be done 
— on the text, "Whose fan is in His Hand." 

This is a giddy city, so much chaff, so little wheat. 
We are beginning to prepare for a general, united 
Mission of all the Churches, with Fr. Field from St. 
Clement's, for Missioner. You will intercede for him, 
and us, I know. 

We have never had better health in Syracuse, than 
here on the hill, this winter. 

In October, 1886, while Bishop Huntington was 
absent at the General Convention in Chicago, his 



THE ROYAL LAW 351 

household removed to Walnut Place. This was due to 
Judge Comstock and his son, who by an exchange of 
the property on James Street, which had been occupied 
as an episcopal residence, were enabled to erect for 
the use of the Bishop and his family a new dwelling 
unusually commodious and cheerful, and in a charming 
situation. One pleasant feature was the near prox- 
imity of the Hospital of the Good Shepherd. For the 
remainder of his life it was the Bishop's great interest, 
not only as the president of the institution, but as 
its friend and pastor, to visit it frequently, to hold 
services, on feast days and Sundays, for the patients 
and nurses, and to welcome the superintendent and 
members of the Training School to his own home. 

Syracuse, Oct. 28, '86. 

My dear George: — The Convention was unsatis- 
factory chiefly on negative grounds, — for what it 
lacked. It lacked large and vital measures, a genial, 
warm and brotherly spirit, within itself, the devotional 
relatively to the ecclesiastical and forensic element, 
and a wise economy of time and speech. I was tired 
of the heat and noise, and conceiving my duty to be 
practically done, left Saturday, and spent Sunday in 
Buffalo and Rochester with friends, and in worship, 
and got home Monday noon. Since that time I have 
been hard at work trying to get kosmos out of chaos 
in my mass of papers and not without success. Your 
mother and sisters have benevolently saved me 
much bother and discomfort. We like the house 
altogether. I want you to see my study, and the rest 
of it. 

We are quite in the country. 



352 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

In 1886 Bishop Huntington wrote to a friend 
traveling in Europe: — 

" Every day you are seeing things which, no doubt, 
I should be glad to see and be the wiser for seeing. 
But I must wait for such visions and revelations as it 
may please the Lord of earth and Heaven, sea and sky, 
to give me hereafter. It is not probable now that I 
shall ever cross the water. Four things have always 
stood in the way: good health, much work, little 
money, and dear old Hadley. So I have been happy 
and content, in the native land, with no 'palaces,' 
not many antiquities, and hardly a Cathedral." 

Hadley, July, '88. 
Mt. Holyoke to the Sea. 

A cordial and loving greeting from among the elms 

and orioles, the roses and clover-blossoms, meadows 

and orchards, Jersey cattle and St. Bernard dogs, the 

splendors of brilliant days and the silences of deep 

cool nights. 

Syracuse, Dec. 12, '88. 
There has been a Thanksgiving and, no doubt, you, 
like as, have found much to be grateful for, tho' our 
Feast, perhaps like yours, was stiller than in the past 
times. So evening comes in silence and shade together. 
But I don't think I want to go back. Do you ? Let us 
look rather to what is to come. 

Long before Frederic Huntington delivered the 
Graham Lectures on "Divine Aspects of Human 
Society," as a youth going out from the Theological 
School to his first city parish, and later as teacher of 



THE ROYAL LAW 353 

Christian morals at Harvard, his interests had been 
deeply engaged in questions relating to the brother- 
hood of man. A closer attention to the economic 
side of the problems involved in present social con- 
ditions came about partly through his son, Father 
Huntington, who was for several years a public ad- 
vocate of the single-tax principles, and in close touch 
with societies of wage-earners, establishing, with a 
few of the clergy and laity, the Church Association in 
the Interests of Labor, known familiarly as C. A. I. L. 
Of this Bishop Huntington was president until his 
death, and also of the Christian Social Union. In an 
address before the Evangelical Education Society the 
Bishop replied to the question, "What effort should 
the Clergy make to reconcile the conflict between 
capital and labor, or to secure the application of the 
golden rule to business and social life ? " 
His opening words were as follows: — 
"Whatever the perplexity of the problem, the 
King's Messenger must look, first, for the rule of his 
ambassadorship, to the law of the lips and life of this 
King. At any period, in any land, Christianity has 
found it impossible not to conceive of Christ on earth 
as belonging to the unprivileged, the plain-living and 
hard-working people. At any time, anywhere, the 
Christian Church, whatever its abuses, would have 
been shocked to see its Master and Saviour represented 
as associated by choice, by habit, by taste, if we may 
use that word, with the best-housed, best-fed, best- 
dressed families; with the luxurious and affluent, 
the men of privilege, and of the power of property. 
It is profoundly significant. To know w T here our 
Lord was born, how He lived, and what His manners 



354 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

and associations, how He invariably treated social 
distinctions, on what social class He pronounced 
benedictions, never failing to be gracious and encour- 
aging to them, and to what class He said, ' Woe unto 
you,' and at the hands of what class He was crucified, 
— this must go far to determine the question we have 
before us of the clergy, as it is worded: that is, how to 
'secure the application of the Golden Rule to busi- 
ness and social life,' — no matter, as I take it, to 
whom we minister, on whose support we depend for a 
living, or with what degree of favor we may be re- 
ceived." 

In the course of his address the speaker said: 
" Doubtless better modes of material management 
will be found out; they are slowly getting found out. 
But far deeper down in the depths of the human soul, 
and in the spirit of God, and in the Mediator's cross 
of self-sacrifice, lies the secret of the only lasting 
harmony. Whatever kind of house he lives in, what- 
ever he eats or wears or lays up and counts, if man is 
loving and just to his fellow man he will walk in the 
light and so walk safely and at large; if he hates his 
fellow man he will walk blindly, first to wrong and 
finally to wretchedness. A society that has all its 
property at the top and all its discontent at the bottom 
will topple over into ruin. We may decry and deplore 
turmoil and violence, strikes and lockouts, hung-up 
wheels of factories, and stalled railway trains of pas- 
sengers and freight; we must deplore them. But they 
are an inevitable satire on a nation or community 
where passengers themselves are held only as so much 
baggage, where workmen are reckoned part of the 
machine, where the Declaration of Independence is 



THE ROYAL LAW 355 

in everybody's hands but not in the consciences or 
hearts of legislators and manufacturers and million- 
aires. At the core of all these guilty troubles is one 
malignant disease — contempt of what the brother- 
man is, coveting and worshiping of what he has. Put 
the man where you please, put him high or put him 
low, he cannot live — really live — by bread alone. 
By the 'Word of God' he shall live." 

And again from his lips came stern denunciation of 
social iniquities: "Will the fire scorch the Hebrew 
monopolists only ? Will it skip the pews of the nine- 
teenth century capitalists, owners of foul sweating- 
shops, unsanitary tenements, selfishly managed mines, 
factories and railways, because the warnings have 
rung down through eighteen centuries ? There are 
inequalities that the Almighty permits; there are 
other inequalities which man makes and God abhors 
and rebukes. One of these must be that where a 
privileged, shrewd, and importunate employer makes 
miseries along with his millions. There are compe- 
titions fair and scrupulous, there are others as despi- 
cable as they are despotic." 

It would be difficult to estimate the extent to which 
Bishop Huntington gave the influence of his intellectual 
ability in the cause of what has been broadly defined as 
Christian socialism. His utterances on that subject, 
publications in the daily press, and in the church 
newspapers, articles in magazines, sermons, platform 
speeches, editorials in the " Gospel Messenger, " charges 
to the clergy, pastorals and Convention addresses, — all 
bore witness to his deep concern for the application of 
Christian principles in the establishment of right rela- 
tions between workers and employers, and of higher 



356 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

standards in legislation and business. The titles of 
some of these writings are: "Present Aspect of the 
Church Social Union," delivered by its President at 
Minneapolis, in 1895 ; " The Master- Workman : a Labor 
Day Discourse;" "Causes of Social Discontent," in 
the "Forum " of September, 1888; "Social Problems 
and the Church," in the "Forum" of October, 1895; 
"Applied Christianity the True Socialism," in the 
"Homiletic Review," April, 1890; "The Church and 
the Labor World," in the "Iron Cross;" "Moral Cow- 
ardice : a Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Laity of 
Central New York." 

Among shorter contributions are: "The Cause and 
Losses of Strikes ; " "The Relations of Employer and 
Employed;" "The Labor Troubles;" "The Abuse 
of the Money Power; " "Class Slavery; " " The Pre- 
vious Question in Labor Reform ; " " The Social 
Submergence." 

Of the widespread effect upon the thought of the day 
by his championship of a then unpopular cause, no 
better proof can be given than in the following letter 
found among the Bishop's papers: — 

My honored Brother: — You are an old man and 
may lay down life's burdens which you have so nobly 
borne, and I am a young man, a Baptist minister, with 
I trust many years of toil ahead; but I want, though a 
stranger, to thank you for the great service which you 
did me through your articles on the Church and the 
social problem a few years ago. They opened my eyes. 
They led me to enlist in the great army of reform to 
which you belong, and I want to tell you now that as 
you lay down your weapons I am one of the hundreds 






THE ROYAL LAW 357 

and thousands of young men all over this country who 
are taking up those weapons of truth and who trust we 
shall see full victory. 

Nov. 24, 1889. 

To Rev. James Huntington. 

Did you notice that the Scriptures yesterday, espe- 
cially the Epistle, Gospel, and Old Testament lessons, 
contemplate a regenerate and righteous Society, a 
public and Social Salvation, a " delightsome land," 
"their own land," judgment and justice on the earth ? 
Christ is Feeder as well as King, — a Shepherd King. 
The Bread eaten, the sacrificial Food, is endlessly and 
boundlessly multiplied. 

Bishop Huntington was requested by Miss Harri- 
ette Keyser, the Secretary of C. A. I. L., to furnish a 
letter to be used for organization work, and sent the 
following : — 

' The constantly advancing movement of the new 
demands of the Kingdom of God, as the Divine agency 
of social righteousness among men, specially served by 
our Association, are hardly less striking than the per- 
manence of its principles. The signs multiply, and our 
faith grows accordingly, that C. A. I. L. was formed, 
with its clerical and lay membership, at the right time, 
with the right aims. What other recognized organiza- 
tion within the Church is so explicitly and resolutely 
given to this service ? Every fresh phase in the rapidly 
shifting course of political and industrial affairs chal- 
lenges the solemn attention of studious and patriotic 
men, citizens and scholars, prophets and priests. With 
their sympathy and practical assistance, we hope to 



358 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

accomplish, in the coming season, more than here- 
tofore, by lectures, discussions, publications, and 
sermons for the cause of justice, order, equity, peace 
and good-will." 

In a private letter he said : — 

" I try, in my many preachments, to put in something 
for C. A. I. L. and the Cause." 

In a sketch of the varied duties of the Episcopate, 
at one of the Convention addresses to the Central 
New York Diocese, its head spoke rather explicitly of 
the claims upon a bishop's time and strength: ''Nearly 
one half of his waking hours, running generally into 
the night, must be occupied with correspondence 
wherever he may be. It would be well-nigh impossible 
to describe the range of his daily mail. Thinking it 
might be entertaining, if not instructive, I have just 
attempted to make out a classification of this epistolary 
variety by specifying species only, but after covering 
two foolscap pages with headings I gave it up — the 
topics stretching all the way from situations for shop- 
boys and servant-maids to inquiries whether the 
Christian Religion will probably survive the second 
edition of Lux Mundi, and whether Leo XIII will be 
the last Pope. This tax is imposed, I suppose, by the 
circumstance that a Bishop is a person easily identified 
and reached, holding an office thought to be serviceable, 
in contact with nearly all human conditions, and not 
very likely to resent almost any kind of approach. 
With respect to this incessant and copious torrent of 
requests and questions, little and great, according to 
my conception of a true Shepherd of the Fold of Christ. 
a Bishop ought to hold himself ready to answer, re- 
spectfully and cheerfully, even the least sensible of 



THE ROYAL LAW 359 

them all, if he is appealed to in the name of our patient 
and infinitely forbearing Master. They come from 
one or another child of God somewhere suffering, 
from some human need such as any servant of the 
Master, whose mercy knows no bounds of position 
or breeding or knowledge, would gladly relieve, even 
where the prospect is dim." 

Li addition to the many calls naturally coming, as 
the Bishop said, to a man in his position, there were 
seekers especially drawn to himself through a know- 
ledge of his own religious experience. The following 
letters are examples of the positiveness of his replies. 

To an Inquirer. 

The Apostles' Creed is to be believed and held by a 
disciple in the Church Catholic, — as you see in the 
Office of Baptism, in the Prayer-book, where those 
who are made members of Christ by the initiatory 
Sacrament declare the rule of Faith, Obedience and 
Renunciation. Confirmation completes the baptismal 
consecration by an individual choice. It adds no new 
article of belief, but settles, "confirms," establishes 
the believer and gives him a special grace to go for- 
ward and grow in goodness. 

The thirty-nine articles are Provincial, a solemn 
statement of a National Church or two, in view of a 
temporary emergency, largely negative, a guide to 
the Clergy, not binding on the laity. 

If you wish to be a disciple of Christ, trust Him 
as your Saviour, worship according to the Book of 
Common Prayer, and can say the Apostles' Creed 
ex animo, you are entitled to confirmation and had 
better receive it. 



360 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

In coming to me you come to a brother-soul that has 
had some experience in the "outcast" business and 
has tasted of its bitterness, — but for twenty-one 
years, dating back to the feast of the Annunciation, 
has known such unbroken peace within, in the doc- 
trine and worship of this Church, that the conflicts 
are well-nigh forgotten. Before that time I was fa- 
miliar with most forms of doubt and denial, by per- 
sonal contact. 

In my judgment this Church — which is a School 
as well as a Home — is the natural place of those who 
find it not altogether easy to reconcile an intellec- 
tual and a spiritual habit. It would probably help 
you to read for awhile the works of thinkers and 
students who have rested in the Apostolic Confes- 
sion. 

From a letter to a Minister lately Unitarian. 

I do not myself believe that the obstacles to bridg- 
ing the gap between the Church and a large number 
of devout and thoughtful people in each of the Chris- 
tian sects are so desperate or insuperable as they are 
made to appear. In order to do it we want men of 
some thinking power, some learning, some largeness 
of sympathy, who either by their experience or their 
insight are capable of looking on both sides at once. 
Those who have lived on both sides ought to be 
thereby fitted for so noble a service. 

Coming now to what you want to find out : the prob- 
ability of your feeling at home in our Communion 
and being happy and useful in our Ministry would 
depend in part on your hearty acceptance of the 
Church-system as I have endeavored to present it. 



THE ROYAL LAW 361 

Holding it you would find your course easy, your 
surroundings congenial, and the general intellectual 
and ecclesiastical relations satisfactory, allowing for 
the unavoidable trials which belong to a cross-bearing 
profession everywhere. With Ministers coming from 
without, the crux is apt to be the Apostolic Succession, 
which, however, is not a speculative dogma but a fact, 
determinable largely by arithmetic, each Bishop 
being consecrated by three Bishops, all the Clergy 
being ordained by Bishops, and Christ having pro- 
mised to be with the Apostles to the end of the world. 
In the New Testament there is no instance of an 
ordination without a chief minister or Apostle. A full 
and cordial assent on points like this has much to do 
with contented and effective work afterwards. As to 
liberty, you need not be afraid of being cramped, I 
think. The Bishops respect honest convictions and 
personal independence, guarded by reasonable limits. 
It appears to be the natural effect of living in the Church 
to increase churchly sentiment. 

Three convictions brought me from where I was to 
where I am: viz. that Christianity cannot be ac- 
counted for on the Unitarian theory of Christ; that 
the Christian heart needs both consolations and 
inspirations which Unitarianism, even in Channing 
and Martineau, does not supply; and that there can 
be no Church without organization, nor any authori- 
tative or abiding organization, except that of our 
Lord and His Apostles and the Primitive Age. Since 
coming to these conclusions and acting on them, 
every day has confirmed my confidence, adding, 
without a shadow of doubt or regret, to my gratitude 
and joy that God led me as He did. 



362 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

To One in perplexity and discouragement. 

The fact that your difficulty is so nearly what it was 
twelve years ago or more seems, of itself, to have some 
signification, seeing that Holy Scripture, the best 
Christian literature, wise instruction, reason, con- 
science, the Church, and loving intercessions, have all 
been at hand to aid and comfort you. 

May it not mean that you have been looking too 
much, i. e. too exclusively, i. e. one-sidedly, in a par- 
ticular direction ? May you not have regarded your 
personal religion too much as a peculiar state of the 
sensibilities, a lively emotion, a vivid feeling of your 
Lord's presence and favor, in fact a condition of 
satisfaction, — and too little as a plain, straightforward 
doing, day by day, of God's will in the duties of your 
ordinary life, and in an obedient, childlike spirit? 
There is a great difference. It is the difference between 
a practical and a testimonial piety; between a self- 
absorbed introspection and a healthy discipleship. I 
do not mean that you are inactive or selfish; far from 
it; but that you are striving and struggling after a 
frame which you believe to be the highest type of the 
Christian life, instead of being content to do simply 
and cheerfully those things which lie in the path 
Providence has marked out for you. The Church asks 
of her children the latter course as the way to Heaven. 
You will find your Saviour there, in that path, or 
nowhere. I do not believe you have such faults as 
need keep you restless and wretched. At any rate, 
whatever they are, God, for His Son's sake, has for- 
given them all. You are not a daughter of the bond- 
woman, but of the free, and ought to go on your way 
rejoicing! 






THE ROYAL LAW 363 

To a Clergyman. 

There is a difference of moods, with terms and 
periods in the spiritual man. It cannot be altogether 
explained or accounted for, nor do we always know 
how far it may be due to physical, dietetic, external 
causes. Their existence proves the value and the 
necessity of a regular religious regimen, or devotional 
observances, even when the interest subsides, and the 
sensibility is dulled. The framework of habit is a 
safeguard and there are ups and downs, seasons of 
refreshment and liberty. I pray when I do not feel 
like praying. God knows all about it, and has issued 
his orders with a full and gracious knowledge of my 
nature and needs. 

Moreover, there are apparently certain tides or 
currents, on a wider scale, in the community, in the 
general religious life, and they are not altogether to 
be accounted for. So far as I can judge, if they are 
under law, the law is obscure. At present, however, the 
unprecedented eagerness of enterprise, and rush of 
events, and intermixture of public affairs, will go far 
to explain what looks like dryness, indifference, 
worldliness. The movement is circular, or spiral, and 
we can hope that, as in the past, a time of spiritual 
awakening may come round. We have missionary 
zeal; we want an age of piety and prayer. Meantime 
individual obligation is clear enough. Surely we may 
trust that our apathy will be broken up in God's own 
time and way, and a better than mediaeval "age of 
faith" come in by a new reformation. 

As to our testimony, or witness-bearing to others, 
the difficulties are certainly great. Our Lord did not 
fully state how we are to let our "light shine," or in- 



364 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

terpret his commission to proclaim the Gospel. We 
can watch for opportunities. Few words may be as 
effective as long speeches, and single phrases as elabo- 
rate exhortations or appeals. Life, the face, the voices, 
silence, teach and preach. 

We live by the day — one day at a time. Does this 
not loosen the problems, and bid us be at peace, 
though we may not always be of good cheer ? 



CHAPTER XI 



THE ROAD UPHILL 



"By this time the pilgrims had a desire to go forward, so they 
walked together towards the end of the mountains. Then said the 
shepherds one to another, Let us here show the pilgrims the gate of the 
Celestial City." 

Syracuse, May 29, '89. 
To M. R. H. 

I find it very easy to be seventy years old, now 
that I have tried it. God's goodness and human kind- 
ness make it easy. Perhaps you will like to hear that 
I have just as much strength for labor and endurance 
as I had twenty or thirty years ago, — in fact, so far 
as I can see, as much as I ever had. This cannot last 
always. 

Everything that I hear about Cambridge and 
Boston interests me. There is much that I do not 
hear. We all work here and rest little. There is not 
much time to rest. The world requires intense and 
incessant action, if it is to be made better of its bad- 
ness. 

Your views of the great Hereafter suit me exactly. 
You and I have made a pleasant beginning, but it is 
only that. There may be no birthdays in heaven, or 
lilies of the valley; but then there will be no growing 
old and no sad partings. 

On the feast of the Annunciation, the beginning of 
a letter to A. L. P. recalls that, "It is the anniversary 



866 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

of that blessed day in 1860 when H. and Geo. and A. 
went with me to Christ Church, Cambridge, in the 
evening, to be confirmed. We were going out then from 
a place of unsatisfying privileges, comfort and honors, 
— a barren and dry land where no water was, — 
into a country which we 'had not known' save by 
faith, and as it were in dream, but promised to us and 
given to our ancient Fathers. As it has proved, the 
description of Palestine in Deuteronomy is not too 
good for it. 

"Next week will be almost as full of service as of 
solemnity. So I take an hour with you in the sombre 
half-light of the tender eve of Palm Sunday, before the 
shadows deepen around the great Cross. We are all 
made to know something of the sufferings of heart or 
conscience, which that sacrifice interprets and sanctifies. 
But we know too that beyond them lie Paradise and 
the Life Eternal, where already we seem to see forms 
and faces, shaped by memory and imagination, which 
connect the past and the future, and make them 
one. 

Some years previous to the date of the following let- 
ter, the Rev. George Huntington suffered from a serious 
nervous breakdown, consequent upon overwork, and 
was obliged to resign his parish in Maiden. He re- 
moved for rest and change of air to the little hill 
town of Ashfield, in Massachusetts, fitting up the old 
rectory as a home for his family, and taking charge 
of the small congregation of St. John's Church. 

Syracuse, Oct. 29, '90. 

My dear George : — It is natural that I should 
have many and frequent thoughts about the place 



THE ROAD UPHILL 367 

and returns of your ministry now that it has pleased 
God to answer favorably the prayers which some of 
us at least have been offering daily, for several years, 
for your restoration to health. A devout thanksgiving 
is not only the first duty, but it seems that it ought to 
subdue and put into the background the anxiety, which 
is partly unavoidable, as to your income. The pe- 
cuniary hardship is real; but when we compare it 
with the far greater distress attending your disable- 
ment a few months ago, we ought really to let hope 
and courage take the place of despondency. The 
question whether you could work — for your family 
and the Church — was a much heavier one than the 
question where you shall work. It is unavoidable that 
after a long and slow decline the return to soundness 
and vigor should be gradual. It is well to be on the 
lookout for a more remunerative position, and it is 
well to be willing to wait longer for it. More and 
more it has become my faith that the personal Provi- 
dence is in all the ordering of our lives, even the very 
least, and that when we miss what we greatly desired 
we may safely conclude that God has some better 
thing to give us when He and we are ready. 

What strikes us as incongruous is that with your 
manifold equipment you should reach so few minds 
and lives. But then one remembers Julius Hare 
and his brother, and dozens of the most intellectual 
priests in the English Church, serving for years in 
cures like Ashfield. The reasons and equities and 
openings of mysteries are sure to appear by and 

by. 

With love and sympathy and trust, 

Your Father. 



368 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Three months later his son received a call to the 
rectorship of St. Thomas' Church, Hanover, New 
Hampshire. 

Syracuse, Jan. 29, '91. 
My dear George : — You know what a lively 
interest we all take in every step of your way towards 
Hanover. The opening must be regarded as God's 
way of answering many anxious prayers. It was 
distinctly in my hope that you might be in a College 
town, for which you have special adaptions, 1 and I 
believe you will be of great service to Bishop Niles, 
who needs the help. 

The following June, in the course of the same cor- 
respondence : " Let your reply go to Hadley where I 
long unspeakably to be." And in another: "Give us 
all the time you can this summer. Every hour I long 
more for the silence there, the old sweet odor, the 
long days and the night-mystery and benediction." 

Hadley, July 7, 1891. 

To L. S. H. 

In this separated and silent place and its quiet 
hours I think over the days past and the days to come. 
Often and anxiously I inquire of myself and of our 
dear Lord what I can do to make my sacred and 

1 Rev. George Huntington, in addition to his parish work at 
Hanover, became a Professor of Hebrew in Dartmouth College and 
received a few years later at Commencement the degree of Doctor 
of Divinity. This recognition of his son was a gratification to 
Bishop Huntington which gave him even more pleasure than the 
honors he received himself in 1887 and 1889: from Columbia Uni- 
versity his title S. T. D., and from Syracuse University L. H. D. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 369 

swiftly passing work more effectual, — especially 
what I can do for Syracuse, for the Church in it, for 
the Church people in it. If in your closer intercourse 
with the women or men there than is possible for me, 
you hear of any suggestion as to my labors or method 
or plans or shortcomings, which would be of use to 
me, I beg you to let me know it. 

The pure, fragrant morning air is drawing in at 
my window. The life of the house is only beginning 
to stir. All sounds are musical and all sights are 
beautiful. Since we came, many calls have come to 
me for service. I have preached, confirmed, married, 
traveled, kept up with the mail, and read a good deal. 
I am now in the voluminous "Life " of the late Arch- 
bishop Tait, which rebukes and humbles me. 

Baby Hannah is an unceasing delight. The opening 
of a spirit is more wonderful than the opening of a rose. 

In advancing age, Bishop Huntington's vacations 
were spent in much the same way as of old. He 
never lost his keen relish for the occupations of the 
farm, entering into the work of the hay-field until 
near the end of his life. 1 He always said that even 
on the hottest day he was cooler when busy with his 
rake in the meadows, than in any other place; and he 
seldom showed any sign of fatigue. When he was past 
taking an early plunge in the river he loved still to 

1 That Bishop Huntington considered his estate as a trust to be 
employed for the good of others may be seen from the following 
words written to a Syracuse neighbor; "The great tobacco harvest 
of this valley is nearly over. I am glad to claim that a tobacco-plant 
has never been raised on this farm, where the soil invites it. Some- 
thing that nourishes the life of man or beast seems to be a worthier 
crop." 



370 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

wander along its banks, and was often waiting at the 
boat-landing for the members of the merry party row- 
ing on the stream when they returned home. He 
found the greatest enjoyment in the beautiful wood- 
land on the estate, one summer taking much pleasure 
in laying out a winding road, a mile long, through 
which he would drive his guests, sometimes it seemed 
at imminent risk of overturning, for being all his life 
accustomed to horses he never felt any fear himself. 
No tangled pathway or abrupt turn or steep descent 
daunted him when on an expedition across country. 

A guest in the house, describing a visit there, says 
of her host: "One peculiarity about our drives was 
that we did not keep to the highway at all. He seemed 
possessed with a fancy for letting down bars, and 
taking to fields and meadows, and I never drove over 
so much grass in my life as while there." 

With increasing years he became easily fatigued 
by the noise and confusion of a large household, and 
passed more and more time in his study, with his 
writing or books; but he delighted in taking his 
family on long days' excursions, or with some of 
his grandchildren would jog about the lanes in a low 
phaeton, his gray suit and old straw hat marking him 
out as a familiar figure to the country folk. Always 
alive to the welfare of his native town, he took an 
active part in securing the Goodwin Memorial Library 
building, at the opening of which he made the leading 
address. He was genuinely interested in the affairs 
of the two congregations near his home, one at the 
village to the north and the other worshiping in the 
old Hadley meeting-house erected under the super- 
vision of his grandfather, nearly a century before. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 371 

Anything which concerned the prosperity of these 
fellow-believers was of moment to him, through the 
truly catholic spirit which included other bodies of 
faith, and also on account of the early associations 
so dear to him. With changes in administration, all 
differences connected with his mother's experience 
were forgotten in his later relations to the pastor of 
the Hadley church and his flock. 

In the early winter of 1891, Bishop Huntington 
responded to a request from the Presbyterian Union, 
in New York City, and delivered before them a care- 
fully prepared paper on Church Unity, which was 
afterward published. "The Evangelist" said of it: 
"Bishop Huntington's address was beautiful for 
that broad sympathy with men in their natural pre- 
possessions, that yearning love for the cause of Christ, 
and that quick spiritual apprehension which are 
marked characteristics of the man. He would learn 
what the Church is, not so much by the study of 
history as by the study of Christ. The Church is His 
body, in Him Christians are actually one, though they 
have not come to realize it. The discussion was not 
now one of doctrinal points, and since Presbyterians 
recognized the validity of Episcopal ordination, it 
seemed a simpler matter to the good bishop than it 
probably does to most of us, that Presbyterians should 
accept the Historic Episcopate, with such powers of 
adaptation to our policy and regulation of our wor- 
ship and discipline as are due to our own honorable 
traditions. . . . 

" Thus he thought a federation of Churches might 
be made, somewhat analogous to our national federal 
union." 



372 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

The exact language used was as follows : — 

"There need be no distress at the word 'federation,' 
for there would be no federation of Churches; the 
Church would be, as she originally was, and in the 
original sense ever must be, one. 

" This republic is not a federation of nations, but of 
states as a Nation. In the choice of a term for one 
of the constituent parts of the integral commonwealth, 
— the state, — our civil fathers took a name which 
had been and still is in civil language applied to the 
constitutional whole. By the limitations of language, 
inaccuracy is the blemish of many a nomenclature 
which nevertheless serves a great purpose in the 
philosophy and practice of government. Within a 
National or Provincial Church there might be synodic 
Councils, Chapters, or Convocations. Encircling them 
all would be the fourfold vinculum, the very same that 
our Declaration named, Scripture, Creed, Sacraments, 
Apostolical Commission." ■ 

For the Lenten season of that year Bishop Hunt- 
ington prepared the last of his three books of devo- 
tional readings, with the title of "Forty Days with 
the Master." The material in this volume was taken 
entirely from his own writings. 

Amid his constant literary activities were publica- 
tions each year of Lenten pastorals, searching, spirit- 
ual, and direct in their character; contributions to 
leading church weeklies; and tracts, of which may be 
mentioned particularly the following: "Christ and 
the World;" " Gospel and Judgment;" "Three Lines 

1 The so-called " Quadrilateral" issued by the House of Bishops 
at the General Convention in Chicago in 1886; four articles of 
agreement put forth as a basis of Church Unity. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 373 

of Service;" "The Common Things of Divine Ser- 
vice;" " Letter to a Young Postulant;" " Divine Citi- 
zenship." Many of these messages, from the pulpit 
or the press, the Bishop circulated personally, send- 
ing them to the clergy and to friends at a distance, 
thus keeping in touch with a long list of correspond- 
ents. 

Syracuse, Dec. 23, '92. 

Dear George : — I wish we could all keep the 
Feast together. That being out of the question I want 
to give you the Christmas morning salutation. What 
stronger proof of the Kingship of the Son of Man in 
a world so self-seeking as this, than that by Him, one 
day and night every year, everybody in Christendom 
is set to thinking kindly of somebody else ? It is as 
great a miracle as what the shepherds saw and heard 
at Bethlehem. 

We all heartily wish you all the Christmas joy. 
How much we have to be thankful for! 

With love and blessing, 

F. D. H. 

Bishop Huntington's want of sympathy with ex- 
tremes in ritual observances was well known, though 
there were not many cases in his own jurisdiction 
where he felt called upon to warn or to admonish, and 
none where any serious collision occurred. In the 
matter of language and terminology his objection was 
strongly expressed against the use of the word " Mass." 
In the spring of 1893 this was a subject which gave 
him so much concern that it was only with an effort 
that he set it aside, as shown in the following letter. 



374 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Walnut Place, May 26, '93. 

To the Rev. George Huntington. 

I have dismissed the matter of the " Mass " from my 
mind. I thought and think now, that if any Priest 
in our Church should persist in using the outlandish 
and offensive term, with a knowledge of the religious 
harm it must do, of the reasons against it, and of the 
absence of all authority for it, such a persistency could 
not fail to cause a suspicion of a concealed intention 
to assimilate the Anglican to the Latin Church, and 
to hide the difference between the two as respects 
Eucharistic doctrine. The great opportunity which 
the "advanced men" (so far as they hold to the Hu- 
manity in the Incarnation and its practical realization 
in Society) have before them, renders their account- 
ability the more fearful if they overlay or disturb 
or misrepresent the spiritual substance of the Faith. 

Sept. 4, 1893, was the fiftieth anniversary of the 
marriage of Frederic Dan Huntington and Hannah 
Dane Sargent, in Hartford Place, Boston; and the 
Golden Wedding celebration took place quietly at 
Hadley. The entire family was assembled: the five 
children, a daughter-in-law and son-in-law, and seven 
grandchildren. Mrs. Archibald Sessions, the second 
daughter, had already made her permanent summer 
home, with her husband and little girl, at Pine Grove, 
the mansion on the southern part of the original 
property built by Major Phelps, and purchased from 
his cousins by Bishop Huntington two years before. 
On the day of commemoration a few intimate friends 
and relatives gathered with the family for supper 
in the "Long room" of the old house. Many mes- 



THE ROAD UPHILL 375 

sages of affection and congratulation were received, 
with gifts in gold and silver; a beautiful picture being 
sent by the clergy of Syracuse. The occasion was 
one of complete happiness and thanksgiving, expressed 
by the whole household together, at Grace Church, 
Amherst, the day previous, when Bishop Huntington 
celebrated the Holy Eucharist, and his two sons as- 
sisted, the younger preaching the sermon. 

One day that season the Bishop climbed up the rough 
ground on Mt. Warner, with some of the farm people, 
in a search for a lost heifer, and experienced a strain. 
It did not seem a matter of any consequence, at first, but 
gradually caused discomfort, so that on returning to 
Syracuse he gave up much walking or standing. The 
pain and inaction, combined with an accumulated 
nervous fatigue, produced a condition of depression 
and weakness which increased as the winter came on. 
While no serious difficulty developed, the sufferer 
could not throw off the feeling of apprehension, which 
was an inherited constitutional affection. It was 
finally decided, by the advice of the physician, to try 
the effects of a voyage across the Atlantic and the 
change of scene to be found in foreign travel. Mrs. 
Huntington, with the youngest daughter, accom- 
panied her husband, and they spent six weeks in 
Great Britain and France, returning early in June, in 
time for the Annual Diocesan Convention which met 
in Syracuse. 

Cunard Royal Mail Steamship "Umbria." 

April 14, 1894. 

To Rev. James Huntington. 

My dear James : — We are glad to know of your 
engagements and to get your Good-by. 



376 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

"Again farewell, an idle word. 

Spoken to thee, who farest well always: 

'Good-bye' then, idler still. 

As God were not 

With thee through all the never-ending days/' 

Let your chief intercession for me be that I may 
be more willing that God's will may be done with me, 
in life or death, health or infirmity, that I may be of 
more and better use in Christ's service while I live 
here, and that the perfect love of God in me may cast 
out fear. 

Your ever loving and trusting father, 

F. D. H. 



Euston Hotel, London, April 27, 1S94. 

To L. S. H. 

This afternoon, we have been floating up and down 
the Cam, under the Spring sunshine, Colleges and 
their Quadrangles in full view; orchards full of fruit 
blossoms, and gardens, sweet with flowers, on either 
side, lilacs, laburnums, and masses of ivy hanging 
over the banks, and down the ancient walls: and 
mossy stone steps, classic bridges and arches overhead; 
birds of many kinds singing in the shrubbery, crows 
cawing in the tree-tops just as ours do at Hadley, — 
but building their nests in plain sight of the town, as 
ours do not; whole fleets of students rowing and 
sailing, many tennis courts, children at play, and 
swans craning their white necks, — all a lovely vision. 
We have seen many tilings and people. Next week 
we expect to go to Oxford, Salisbury, Canterbury. 
Paris, — and then Northwards, D. V. God will hear 
the many prayers — yours and others — and will 



THE ROAD UPHILL 377 

answer them all in His own good and wise way, 
whether just as we desire or not. 

We have worshiped once at St. Paul's, once at 
St. Pancras, once at St. Martin 's-in-the-Fields, once at 
Westminster Abbey. 

How sad it is that, of many ages, so large a propor- 
tion are commemorated for great deeds in the art of 
slaughter, for mere power, or for rank and title and 
birth, — so few for the greatness which Christ made 
chief of all, — faith, hope, charity, for character! 

Edinboro', May 19, 1894. 

To J. I. T. C, 

On the whole I think the image of what we saw 
on Thursday will stay longest in remembrance — the 
views of Fountains Abbey, near Ripon, lying in 
pathetic silence and majesty in a winding valley, remote 
from all dwellings of men. The vine-covered w T alls 
of the monastery itself help one to trace out measurably 
the whole round of daily life of those extraordinary, 
silent, praying, obedient recluses, scholars, toilers, 
preachers, — all gone forever. They covered a large 
place in their domain, as they did in the world's his- 
tory. And now every day of summer, bands of trav- 
elers visit these memorials of the Past from all parts of 
the world. We have seen them in every Cathedral, 
gallery, palace, where we have been. Such is the spell 
of years ! 

Traveling at the rate we do, we can only see the 
surface of things, persons or places. One of the chief 
effects is to make one feel more palpably and painfully 
how- little he knows. I want especially to read over 
again the history of England and the English Church, 



378 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Montalerabert's eloquent "Monks of the West," and I 
Scott's novels. We are all quite ready to sail. It has 
been the coldest May I ever knew, not one warm day, 
not one when a fire was not needed since we left the 
steamer, April 22nd. The fields don't seem to mind it, 
or the lilacs, but we do. The Boston East wind blows 
all the time. . . . 

From London to Paris is indeed from grave to gay — 
cheerv, sunshinv, light-hearted, good-natured Paris. 
England thinks, France laughs. At the Boulevards on 
Sunday afternoon, it might seem that there is no other 
world than this. . . . 

My ailments have yielded kindly to the influence of 
rest and change, in a fair degree. Where there is a 
constant sense of uncertainty in the body it is diffi- 
cult to escape depression of spirit. It is easy to say, as 
everybody does, Don't think about it; but thoughts 
are not so manageable. I can certainly do more than 
before we left home. I have not the slightest doubt 
of God's fatherly mercy and wisdom. I know He is 
dealing graciously with me whatever the result. I 
believe it is not faith that is wanting, or gratitude. 
If He has more active work for me to do, I shall do it 
gladly. If I can go through the push and pull of our 
Convention and the Celebrations and other duties 
of the second week in June, and get to Hadley, per- 
haps I may hope to take up the regular round in the 
Fall. 

On the margin of the letter is written, "God bless 
the Diocese of Massachusetts." 

Natural inclination and the depression of illness 
led the Bishop to avoid all publicity. In private he 



THE ROAD UrHILL 379 

enjoyed meeting his valued friend Canon Benham, 
and the bishops of London, Lincoln, and Ely. In- 
vitations to preach he was obliged to decline. This 
was the more to be regretted because there were 
many who would have welcomed with much en- 
thusiasm the author of " Christian Believing and Liv- 
ing," the volume which has had the widest circulation 
across the water. On more than one occasion a ser- 
mon from this collection, delivered in an English 
pulpit, was recognized by some American traveler 
who heard it. During a meeting of the Congregational 
Board, in Syracuse, there were so many strangers 
to be entertained that hospitality was gladly extended 
by the Bishop's household. He himself was unavoid- 
ably absent from home at the time. When the guests 
arrived, one of them proved to be the Rev. George S. 
Barrett, a distinguished Englishman. His first excla- 
mation when he learned to whose house he had come 
was one of surprise and pleasure; for, as he said, the 
Bishop's sermons had been among his treasured books 
for years, a copy always lying on his writing-table. 
Another pleasant occurrence was when a Syracuse 
woman attended Sunday service at Westminster Abbey 
and listened to a preacher who said, in the course of 
his address, that those influences w^hich had most 
deeply affected his life he owed to the writings of an 
American, mentioning by name the Bishop of Central 
New York. 

Among the few letters written on this journey 
w r as one to a presbyter of Central New York, in 
w T hich he described his visit to the University of 
Cambridge. Rev. Mr. Casey says, in reply: "I 
am much pleased to hear that you were invited to 



380 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

preach in St. Mary's pulpit, — the most jealously 
guarded one, I take it, in the whole of our English- 
speaking world. It was an * honor, ' no doubt, and the 
fact that your invitation was for the 10th of June 
made it all the greater, but unless I have mistaken the 
temper of my fellow countrymen in general, and of 
my fellow university men in particular, more than I 
can easily conceive to be possible, they must have 
felt, as I do, that it was one of the rare and happy 
cases in which — not to speak profanely, — ' honors 
were easy.' " 

A few lines penned hastily to an old friend express 
the beneficial effects of the vacation : — 

Walnut Place, June 5, 1894. 
As to my health the trip seems to have been well- 
advised and well-timed. We only arrived last evening, 
and I am writing at an early hour, the only one astir 
in the house, and with a vast pile of work before me. 

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the consecration 
of the Bishop of Central New York occurred on the 
Sunday of the Good Shepherd, April 8, 1894. Sermons 
appropriate to the occasion were preached on that 
day in many churches of the diocese, and a united 
service was held by the parishes of Syracuse at St. 
Paul's on that evening, when the discourse was de- 
livered by the Rev. Joseph Morrison Clarke, D.D. 
A more formal and very impressive commemoration 
took place during the session of the Convention in 
Syracuse, on June 13. Morning Prayer was said and 
the Holy Communion celebrated, with a sermon 
by Rt. Rev. Henry Codman Potter, Bishop of New 



THE ROAD UPHILL 381 

York. At the evening service addresses were made 
by Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western 
New York; the Rev. John Brainerd, D.D., rector of 
St. Peter's, Auburn ; with one written by the Rev. 
Eliphalet Nott Potter, D.D., President of Hobart 
College, and read in his absence by Rev. Henry R. 
Lockwood, rector of St. Paul's, Syracuse. 

In his address before the Convention the Bishop 
made this reference to the journey from which he had 
just returned: — 

"Looking reverently at twelve worshipful Cathe- 
drals, and sharing the stately but never florid wor- 
ship in several of them, where veneration is mingled 
with thanksgiving, and admiration is surpassed only 
by wonder, I can testify in all sincerity that a plain 
service in any one of our least elaborate churches or 
mission chapels of our own Diocesan domain touches 
a tenderer place in my affections, and wakens a 
warmer personal sympathy, than the pillars and 
arches, the marble and the gold, the carvings and 
memorial tablets of the grandest of them. History 
and art, stones literally and visibly grooved by the 
knees of adoring believers gone hundreds of years 
ago to Paradise, the echoes of their anthems, the 
fame of prelates and martyrs, are wrought into the 
grace and majesty of those marvelous structures. Yet 
I find something in myself, which the Lord of an 
unseen glory has planted there, that makes every 
humble sanctuary built and cared for by those who are 
dear as a household, and on whose heads my hands 
have laid God's gracious benediction, more precious 
to my heart than any costlier temple where his honor 
dwelleth." 



382 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

The functions of the whole day were very solemn, 
while a pleasant feature at the close was a general 
reception, when the delegates and the church people 
of Syracuse thronged to take the hand of their beloved 
Bishop and to offer words of congratulation. 

It was natural that the members of the city parishes 
should testify a loyal devotion to one who had labored 
among them for twenty-five years. Some belonged 
to congregations which owed their existence to the 
Chief Pastor, many had received the sacred rite of 
confirmation at his hands, and to more still he had 
repeatedly offered the bread of life and spoken words 
of godly teaching. But through the community at 
large, respect and honor were paid to him by those of 
other creeds than his own who were wont to call him 
"our Bishop." In the words of one who was almost 
a stranger personally : — 

" He was indeed a reverend ■ father in God,' creating 
a palpable atmosphere of purity, as he walked through 
the streets, growing year by year dearer to the people 
as his figure became bent and his step more feeble; 
longing, as he expressed himself, for 'his Father's 
broad acres.' His searching eye, as it was plain to 
the observer, glanced about him in judgment, as 
well as in blessing, and his voice, in greeting, often 
framed words which testified to his abiding con- 
sciousness of his position as a churchman; for ex- 
ample, on one occasion when he wished his passing 
friend, instead of the conventional good-morning, 
'A happy St. Stephen's Day.'" * 

The same writer uses a felicitous simile when she 

speaks of the Bishop's influence as "an abstract 

1 The Craftsman, October, 1904. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 383 

spiritual force working like a powerful chemical 
upon the materialism of a commercial and industrial 
centre." Through the press, in letters and inter- 
views, the subjects of the day — wrongs, abuses, follies, 
were treated with fearless rebuke, and yet all the 
time a strong sympathy breathing through the un- 
sparing sentences made one feel that his heart was 
with the community in which he lived. A prominent 
woman wrote after his death: "I cannot express 
how much we miss him and his fearless writings and 
utterances. How strongly and grandly he would say 
things, how he could make every word ring with 
meaning." And another: "I shall miss keenly his 
presence and example and the power he had of put- 
ting the right course of action plainly before the 
public. In looking back it seems as if he had been in 
a way the conscience of the city, and his words in 
any time of perplexity carried a weight that none 
else's could. Think of what he had done, just by his 
individual opinion, in the way of keeping church 
entertainments within proper bounds, and how 
his letter about the Mormons appealed to every 
decent person in the Community, no matter to what 
church they belonged." 

The incident referred to was the advertised notice 
of a public meeting to be held in a convention hall, 
in Syracuse, in the interests of the Mormon cause. 
A good deal of notoriety had been given to the 
proselyting efforts of certain emissaries from Utah, 
and there was some agitation on the subject. A few 
days before the date appointed, Bishop Huntington 
sent a letter to a leading daily paper. In view of the 
fact that the meeting would be attended by many 



384 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

under the pretext that they only wanted to see what 
was going on and hear what the Mormons had to say 
for themselves, he wrote: — 

"A suggestion is made to one class of people, a 
large class. Will it be altogether vain to ask them, 
how they can best serve the cause of public purity, 
domestic order, family welfare, the sanctity of wed 
lock, a clean civilization, a Christian city and com 
munity ? One way, a very cheap way, is to express 
correct sentiments, to denounce the superstition as a 
sin or ridicule it as a folly. Anti-Mormon societies 
may be formed with pious platforms and lofty resolves, 
and a string of officers elected; petitions may be 
signed, protests issued, sermons preached, missionaries 
sent out. 

"Very well. Let me recommend another way, more 
simple, more effective, costing you, Christian man or 
woman, nothing, unless, for the moment, it requires 
the sacrifice of dubious and inquisitive inclination. 
Leave the whole occasion to curiosity-hunters, gos- 
sips, idlers, those of your neighbors to whom time 
and self-discipline and irreproachable associations 
are of no account, and stay away." 

The meeting did not take place, and the visiting 
elders received no further attention. 

The Bishop took a prominent part in enlisting 
support for the Y. M. C. Association. His unwearied 
labors for the forms of benefaction under Jhis imme- 
diate care did not weaken his interest in other lines of 
work. A number of his Theological students were ed- 
ucated at Syracuse University. He lived within sound 
of its beautiful chimes, and his relations with the 
institution were open and cordial. His near neigh- 



THE ROAD UPHILL 385 

bor, the chancellor, Dr. J. R. Day, recalls a visit 
when he found the Bishop, as was usual in his later 
years, sitting by the blazing logs of the hearth. "He 
greeted me with the question, 'Were you reared be- 
fore a fireplace ? I suppose you were as you were a 
New Englander.' But turning to rne rather abruptly, 
as was his way of emphasizing the importance of the 
subject in hand, sometimes, he said: 'We must do 
something for the House of the Good Shepherd. We 
must raise a large sum to put up a thoroughly ap- 
pointed hospital. But you are about to try to pay the 
debts of the University; you plan new buildings. I 
have watched the progress of the University ever 
since I took up my residence here and it has a first 
claim on this city, and I would do nothing to turn the 
attention of the people from it at a time when you are 
making an effort to secure its financial stability, and 
provide for the rapidly increasing number of students.' ' 

Sympathetic to every class of distress, that trait in 
the Bishop's nature which led him to give credence 
to all who came to him for help would have affected 
his private almsgiving if he had not kept to principles 
of relief worked out by him long before the days of 
that inexact science known as " Charity organization." 
To strangers at his doors he would not give money, 
but provided a night's lodging and a railroad ticket 
to any point of destination not far distant. He never 
believed in small loans, preferring to assist the needy 
in other ways, rather than to run the risk of breaking 
down their self-respect by permitting them to incur 
obligations so slight that they would not attempt to 
discharge them. 

Among the difficult cases with which, like all men 



386 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

in his position, he had to deal, were victims of alcohol 
and drugs, professional failures, clerical spendthrifts 
involved inr the entanglements of moral weakness. 
Scrupulous to the smallest detail in his own money 
matters, the Bishop helped many a disheartened de- 
linquent out of the entanglement of financial em- 
barrassment, sometimes sternly, but always with clear 
business advice and prompt action. When a trans- 
gressor had lost character he readily lent his in- 
fluence to secure a renewed confidence, and oppor- 
tunity for employment. After he was eighty years old 
he took two long journeys on successive days, in un- 
certain weather, in order to gain clemency from his 
employers for a defaulter in exile and disgrace. Of all 
sufferers he was most pitiful to children, and in later 
years could not hear of such without emotion and 
immediate steps for relief. 

He was always good-natured to interviewers, specially 
so in the comparative leisure of old age. One of them 
related that being introduced into the study he found 
its occupant buried in thought. "He rose and ex- 
tended his hand in friendly greeting. ' I have come to 
get a sentiment from you on Thanksgiving, Bishop.' 

" He seated himself again and gazed into the fire 
awhile and then said: — 

" ' Oh, I don't know. A long list of things. We are 
thankful for about everything we have. It all comes 
from above. I don't know what to select out of the mul- 
titude of causes for thanksgiving to especially mention. 3 

"He mused awhile and then said: — 

" * You might put it all in one sentence — the Al- 
mighty does not deal with us according to our de- 
servings.' " 



THE ROAD UPHILL 387 

Among the various applications which come to 
public men, one of the most frequent is for a free and 
impromptu expression of opinion on the, great ques- 
tions of the day. Bishop Huntington was never in 
any sense a political partisan. While willing to talk 
about the movements of the time, giving attention 
to progressive measures and the minds of those who 
prompted them, he took no interest at all in the suc- 
cess of any particular party, whether in local or na- 
tional affairs. It was no doubt a peculiarity of his 
nature to stand somewhat aloof, to view events in the 
character of a prophet or a seer, rather than to take 
sides in any political controversy. In behalf of civic 
responsibility he spoke often and earnestly. On the 
lines which divided the hostile camps, he advocated 
free trade, and strongly opposed the acquisition of 
the Philippine Islands. He favored the removal of 
political disabilities from women, and was much 
interested in the single-tax reform. 

The following letter was written during the Bryan 
Campaign. 

To Rev. J. O. S. Huntington. 

The text seems to be " These ought ye to have done, 
and not to leave the other undone." Is there any such 
thing as a conscience that is not a social conscience ? 
Can any soul be pious in a Christian sense, that is not 
actively just, be holy without being serviceable ? Will 
a devotional culture avail without a social and civic 
usefulness ? Which must come first ? 

Can the one go without the other ? It is the ques- 
tion of the time for two parties seeking the kingdom, 
and wishing to be saved. 



388 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

What the Church as well as the world needs is to 
get nearer to God. But what God ? What kind of a 
God ? If it is the God in Christ, the answer seems to 
be, Isolated religion is impossible. A revival or in- 
crease of personal piety cannot be had, and ought 
not to be preached, without a distinct and a con- 
scious purpose to help mankind. I more and more 
believe that here is where our strength as teachers and 
preachers ought to be spent, — on making all man- 
ner of humane work devout, godly, and all worship 
practical for the world. 

It is certainly interesting to observe, from day to 
day, the course of the national debate, and the strange, 
shifting, unexpected turns of the political struggle. 
One thing is already established, the legitimacy of the 
bolt. Parties are split to pieces, and the stanchest 
partisans on both sides are mugwumps. Independent 
voting is henceforth respectable. It would be a great 
satisfaction if the real underlying interest, the rights 
of labor, the equality of classes, the overthrow of the 
money power, could have come before the country 
unmixed with the squabble about money, so that one 
could have had a chance to vote for a principle 
irrespective of the chink of gold or silver, and the 
financial problem that so few of us understand, and 
about which men equally good and wise are hope- 
lessly divided. The contest of the war in the sixties 
had a higher dignity and roused a nobler enthusiasm. 

In his address to the Diocesan Convention in June, 
1895, the Bishop made this statement: — 

" In February a suit brought against me as Bishop 
to compel the admission of a Presbyter into this 






THE ROAD UPHILL 389 

Diocese and the Rectorship of a Parish, from the 
Diocese of Western New York, came to a unanimous 
decision by the Supreme Court, on appeal, adverse 
to the Plaintiffs. The action complained of and the 
defense rested on a purpose to maintain the honor of 
the ministry and the law of the Church according to the 
provisions of Canon 18, Title 1 of the Digest. Com- 
ment on events, expressions and measures connected 
with the contention, which lasted more than two 
years, is obviously needless, and is withheld. Names 
and details, if wanted, must be sought elsewhere than 
in official records. The Parish in question has re- 
sumed a position in loyal submission to constituted 
authority, in harmony with its previous honorable 
history. Our Diocese as well as the Church at large, 
is under obligations of gratitude and esteem to the 
Hon. A. H. Sawyer, of our own Standing Committee, 
for an exhaustive and weighty argument, which 
won him the admiration, and encomiums of dis- 
tinguished judges and lawyers, and which together 
w T ith the extended opinion of the Court, must be 
recognized henceforth as conclusive in judicial pro- 
ceedings and tribunals affecting ecclesiastical govern- 
ment." 

This was the only public allusion ever made by 
Bishop Huntington to the train of annoying circum- 
stances which led to the litigation, and which forced 
him into an official action he was reluctant to take. 
With his peace-loving disposition it was a peculiar 
trial to be at variance with any of his own people. 
A community like that in which he lived has always 
a considerable number who side with the complainant 
of a grievance, whatever it may be; and there was a 



390 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

popular outcry for the Bishop to defend himself 
from the charge of ecclesiastical tyranny. This 
affected him not a whit; but he did feel the unjust 
and damaging comments in the press, almost be- 
wildered that such sentiments could be stirred up 
against him. Besides this he resented the circulation 
of a pamphlet containing anonymous letters de- 
rogatory to himself, and he was hurt by the fact that 
business men, with whom he was on friendly terms, 
could be connected with its publication and sale. 
The documents preserved show how patiently he dealt 
with the parties concerned, how slowly he came to 
the final step of inhibition, how careful he was to 
bring no unnecessary personal reproach. That he 
cherished ill-will towards any concerned there was 
no evidence from first to last. His joy and relief, when 
the suit closed favorably and all unpleasantness was 
ended, showed itself in the fact that among his papers 
were treasured the many messages and letters of 
congratulation he received from sympathizing friends 
within and without the diocese. 

Bishop Huntington attended the Triennial Conven- 
tion at Minneapolis in 1895, the last at which he was 
ever present. He had hoped to be at the opening ser- 
vice in his old beloved Emmanuel in Boston in 1904. 
In October, 1895, from Minnesota, he wrote to his son 
a detailed account of the visit to Faribault, the scene 
of George Huntington's early experience in teaching. 
Of the proceedings he says : " The temper is amiable 
and there is not a great deal of party-spirit. The old 
party-lines have disappeared. Nothing is said about 
ritualism, pro or con. Two * tendencies' appear, but it 
is not easy to define them ; perhaps ' ecclesiasticism ' 



THE ROAD UPHILL 391 

and 'evangelicalism' would do for terms. But the 
lines cross, and the types mix. There is a queer hy- 
brid of 'Broad Church' and 'Sacerdotalism,' with a 
leaning to titular fads and external display. The 
w r orst of it is that the philosophy at the bottom of it, 
if it has any bottom, is Pantheism, confounding Hu- 
manity and Deity." 

Hadley, Aug. 30, '96. 
To his Son. 

My dear James : — Tuesday I drove to B. for a St. 
Bartholomew Celebration in a tiny Congregational 
Chapel for the sake of a few summer boarders. I 
found the roads lovely along the north base of Holy- 
oke, the stone walls picturesque, and the Pansy- 
farm in Logtown brilliant in floral beauty. 

D. is pathetically the same, — an unconscious 
philosopher, an amiable pessimist. He asked about 
you, regarding your life, I suppose, as a harmless 
insoluble mystery. 

It is one of the delicious, tender, still autumnal 
Sundays — the first faint touch of color on the woods, 
a thin light haze along the hills, the veil deepening the 
beauty and making it more fascinating, by mystery 
— imagination widening the narrow realm of know- 
ledge and sense. The cattle seem to dream, lying 
in the pastures. This morning I took the service and 
preached at Grace Church, Amherst, and now Mary 
and I are going out to the five o'clock Prayers — after 
I look for some forget-me-nots and cardinal flowers. 

Syracuse, June 1, 1897. 
To L. T. G. 

Three weeks from to-day, D. V., we mean to ex- 
change our favored dwelling here, in the smart city 



392 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

on the scene of my ever busy labors, for the blessed 
stillness, deep breaths and invisibly peopled solitude 
of the old Hadley Homestead, — broken only by the 
songs of many birds, the voices of .cattle and the 
farm, of my companionable and watchful mastiff and 
St. Bernard, and the steam-whistle deliciously distant, 
and the whispers and breezes in the elms. 

Yesterday I traveled fifty miles, preached, con- 
firmed and traveled back late at night; got up this 
morning before six, traveled twenty miles, preached 
and confirmed again; traveled back and held a 
service in the Hospital and visited patients and have 
written several hours. 

Hadley, Aug. 22, '97. 
To Mrs. Huntington. 

We are getting through the Second Sunday. All 
days here are Sabbatic, — but some nameless, inde- 
scribable, felt secret in the air makes the hour different 
from all others. The Hatfield evening bell has sent 
its tender notes across the river : the wood pewee is 
singing his pathetic song in the orchard; the August 
cricket is piping. A. is taking the vagrant dog to his 
supper; all else is still after another thundershower. 
That bell made me homesick for my mother when 
I was a child; now for you. 

Next Sunday I am to pray and preach at the old 
Hadley Meeting-house, the minister being away. 
At my north-window "fast falls the Eventide," and I 
must say good-night. 

Syracuse, Jan., '98. 
To T. E. P. 

To some extent it is true, I think, that as the years 
go on all the Feasts have their interest and gladness, 



THE ROAD UPHILL 393 

chiefly in the light and gladness they bring to others 
rather than ourselves. Life becomes such a serious 
thing to us, suffering and dissatisfaction form so large an 
ingredient in the cup; we find it wisest and best to seek 
our pleasure and content in what we can do for those 
around us, and in the particular duties near at hand. 

Syracuse, Jan. 2, 1898. 
To J. I. T. C. 

The older I grow (and now I can say " next year" 
of the eightieth) the more religion and the more 
philosophy I discover in "living by the day." For the 
rest we must wait till the promised conditions of 
another and far better age of experience shall give 
us a larger and closer vision and a deeper acquaintance 
with the plans and purposes of God. This rule seems 
to apply to the public affairs of the Nation and even 
of the Church, as well as to the private experience. I 
take it as a sign that you have a healthier spirit and a 
finer faith than mine that you are able to look so 
hopefully and cheerfully on the world as it is and the 
times we are living in. Stoutly as I struggle not to 
shiver among the pessimists, I confess it requires some 
effort to see signs of increasing devotion, sacrifice, 
faith, spiritual power. But the future is not ours. 
And if you, who observe from your post of watchman, 
see the condition optimistically, surely I, more kept in 
the midst of the hurly-burly, ought not to despair 
or even to despond. The future is not ours. "The 
Lord reigneth." Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, 
to-day and forever. I give thanks for countless mercies. 

" Dews in the vale are softly shed, 

I hear the sheep-bells ring the chime. 



394 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

O heart of mine, be quieted. 

God will give rest at evening time." 

March 18, '98. 

To W. H. v. A. 

My Fellow-Laborer together with God : — Turning, 
from your luminous exposition, at once comprehensive 
and condensed, one finds himself asking, — Why 
is it that this fair picture of a righteous Society on the 
earth, where justice and good-will, order and equity, 
love and peace, are the governing principles of in- 
dustry and trade, commerce and government, — 
why is it that it remains a picture only, with no cor- 
responding original or reality, in any continent or 
corner of the round world, sixty generations after 
the Son of Man proclaimed His Commonwealth ? It 
is a hard question, a saddening question, an appal- 
ling question. It requires not only a disciplined faith 
but stout nerves, a sound liver, and a good digestion 
to entertain it without dark dismay. You have said in a 
clear, consecutive, reasonable and fervent discourse 
what ought to be said on the great subject, what 
most needed to be said, and the greater part of what 
there really was to be said. I am proudly glad that I 
could put you in my own place in Cleveland. 

In my youth I used to give Peace addresses. I don't 
remember anything that I should want to take back. 
We are disciples of the Prince of Peace. But Peace 
has its price, — Right must sometimes be fought for. 
There are "wars of the Lord." The sufferings of a 
single campaign or battle are justified if they give 
emancipation and liberty to ages following. I think 
a war against Spaniards in behalf of Cubans would 
be approved of Heaven. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 395 

In his address to the Convention the following June, 
the Bishop alluded to the subject referred to at the 
close of the preceding letter. 

" You may perhaps expect me to say something 
about the war. There is much about it of which I 
ought to say nothing, because I do not understand 
it, and much that might be said has been well enough 
said already. So far as the motive of the war is humane, 
it presents a spectacle of national altruism well-nigh 
unprecedented in history. Nobody but fools can 
expect it to be ended till the Spanish despotism is 
broken. Nobody but fiends can wish it to be pro- 
longed. Nobody but atheists can doubt that it will be 
overruled by Almighty God. Nobody but traitors can 
refuse to share patriotically in its sacrifices." 

Some allusion has already been made to the un- 
happy separation of the parish of St. James, Syracuse, 
from its Chief Pastor, during the months of dis- 
affection caused by his inhibitory letter to their min- 
ister. In the years subsequent he took a personal 
interest in its reestablishment, but financial diffi- 
culties increased, consequent upon a heavy mortgage 
incurred at the time when an attractive edifice on 
James Street replaced the old structure destroyed by 
fire. After making great efforts to retain the property, 
it passed out of the hands of the wardens and vestry 
by foreclosure sale. Through the courtesy of the pur- 
chaser the parish continued occupancy until the 
autumn of 1898, when all hope for the future seemed 
gone. This was the source of much distress to the 
Bishop, who valued highly the history of the first 
church in the diocese opened on the plan of free- 
will offerings, under such faithful rectors as Rev. 



396 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Henry Gregory and Rev. Joseph M. Clarke. Faith 
and courage met their reward when in response to 
the Bishop's appeals, mainly from three friends at a 
distance, the whole amount necessary to redeem the 
property was put into his hands. When a telegram 
brought the last large subscription, on the eve of 
actual abandonment, he came into the room where 
his family were sitting, and, after a moment's silence, 
remarked impressively, " I feel like saying, < Depart 
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.' ' ' The joyful 
occasion of the consecration took place a few w^eeks 
later, Nov. 22, 1898, and was of such significance 
to the Bishop, who had now, by purchase, a place of 
worship in the centre of the city, under his own care, 
that he sent for his sons to be present and take part 
in the services. With the full concurrence of all con- 
cerned, the title was vested in the Parochial Fund of 
the diocese, a board of trustees appointed, and the 
name changed to the Church of the Saviour. Hence- 
forth this was the Bishop's Church, although he 
never called it a Cathedral. 

Syracuse, Dec., 1898. 
To M. C. M. 

Here our busy life goes on — and we can hardly 
stop to think. The marvelous course of events that 
brought the Church of the Saviour suddenly into 
my personal ownership, and so transformed every- 
thing about it, is almost a new epoch in my long life, 
as gratifying as it was unexpected. To have a Church 
and services of my own, is indeed, delightful. There 
are not many people, but we hope to gather a flock 
by hard and patient work. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 397 

Walnut Place, Dec. 22. '98. 

To C. A. F. 

Puritan Day and Church Day come near together 
— both, I trust, to the honor of Him who came to 
bring Peace and Good-will on this disturbed and con- 
fused and too warlike earth. I find it difficult to ac- 
commodate my old ideas, in my eightieth year, to the 
new notions. But old friendships and old friends 
remain, in spite of armies and battles and politics, 
and the wear and tear of time. 

Our blessings are many. My unexpected resump- 
tion of Parish duties is both a joy and a care. H. 
and the girls say it makes me ten years younger. But 
they can't change the record of the Almanac and the 
Family Bible. 

I have read of the architectural changes at " Em- 
manuel." Of course it cannot be to me what it has 
been. Nothing external is changeless. It would be a 
sad thing to think of, if the inner traces of my nine 
years' service should be as evanescent as the fashion 
of the building. Grateful for the Past we can count 
it chief among our Christmas satisfactions that we 
have " a building of God, not made with hands." 

With affectionate remembrance of you all, 

Faithfully, 
F. D. H. 

Jan. 22, 1899. 
I have come in from Sunday service at the Church 
of the Saviour, full of interest to me, where I preach 
a good deal, but I have no time for Pastoral services, 
and am therefore discontented. No Parish can prosper 
without them. 



398 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

Syracuse, March 10, '99. 

To E. H. C. 

My dear Brother : — At your desire I will try to reach 
Utica soon after three, and will go directly to the 
Parsonage. There is no occasion for the formality 
of meeting me at the Station. The special confirma- 
tion sendee on week-days is quite short. If I follow 
my own preference I shall preach a sermon from the 
pulpit. My idea is that, with present prevailing world- 
liness and religious apathy, within the Church and 
without, especially at this season, the voice of the 
pulpit should be searching and solemn rather than 
cheering and encouraging. Short addresses are well 
enough, but they are apt, I fear, to leave an impression 
that is fragmentary and superficial. 

I hardly ever stay away from home now over night. 
I do it, in this instance, on account of what I suppose 
to suit the industries of the St. Andrew's people. 

May the Holy Spirit bless your preparations, and 
grant us a token of His presence and power. 

With sincere affection and confidence, and joy in 
your hearty good-will, 

F. D. Huntington. 

The relations of a bishop to his clergy and through 
them to his flock arc too manifold and often too per- 
sonal to be dealt with satisfactorily in a slight sketch 
of a single prelate. Much of the labor for the parishes 
seems like mere organization: the filling of vacancies, 
the placing of substitutes, the provision for church 
building, the hearing and settling of unimportant 
differences between members of vestries, sometimes 
between the minister and his people. But in all these 



THE ROAD UPHILL 399 

an element is introduced which requires patience, 
consideration, and justice. In these qualities Bishop 
Huntington was not wanting; indeed, his concern for 
the maintenance of good-will inclined him to give un- 
wearied attention to everything which affected the 
harmony of a congregation. His sympathy for the 
poorly paid incumbents of the country cures was 
very great. It was a continual sorrow to him that the 
resources of the Missionary Board and the low esti- 
mate placed upon the services of a preacher kept 
salaries so low. Like other bishops similarly placed, 
he endeavored as far as possible to ease the burden 
through such gifts as he could make with the means 
at his command. When he had occasion to rebuke, 
it was with sternness, sometimes hastily, and in what 
bore the appearance of an arbitrary temper. In old 
age, trifles irritated him, especially in the line of his 
temperamental prejudices. Some things he never 
patiently tolerated, acts which he considered intrusive 
in the conduct of worship, or marks of individual 
deference which he deemed uncalled for. 

Such an incident was related by one of his clergy. 
"He was always ready with a certain quickness of 
temper to resent any homage paid to himself; and 
his disgust at being made an object of foolish ad- 
miration was always profound and sometimes ener- 
getic. I once heard him protest with a kind of whim- 
sical fierceness, very disconcerting to a maladroit 
young clergyman, who sought to force him into an 
eminence which he refused, 'Your Bishop, sir, is 
neither a sage nor a hero, but only an old servant of the 
Master, who amid many humbling limitations and 
many humiliating failures is doing what he can.'" 



400 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

His own sensitiveness was easily wounded by dis- 
trust or want of confidence, and to a corresponding 
extent he was ready to make amends if he found he 
had done unconscious wrong or censured too severely. 
When he had cause to make unsparing criticism, 
either of the substance of a sermon or some ill-advised 
action, he would take pains afterwards to express 
commendation. Towards those from whom he 
differed he strove to be perfectly fair, however strong 
his predispositions to the contrary might be. An 
illustration of this was given in one of the memorial 
sermons preached in a Central New York pulpit 
after his death. "His soul abhorred show, ostenta- 
tion, and pageant. This naturally extended towards 
change or innovation in the matter of the text of the 
ritual laid down in the Prayer-book, or established 
by long custom. In the early days of his episcopate, 
the revival of ritual and ceremonial in the Church 
disturbed and annoyed him. Yet here the man of 
integrity manifested itself." ' The speaker then 
referred to a M Pastoral " issued by the Bishop several 
years before, in which he protested against the use 
of wafers in the Sacrament, not only on the ground 
that it was not a primitive practice, but arguing 
that the material in itself was not bread. When 
convinced by some of his clergy of his error in this 
particular, he sent out another letter withdrawing that 
form of his objection. 

With only a few of his presbyters was he really 
intimate, but with them he was very unreserved, 
putting entire faith in their discretion. He was ex- 
ceedingly unwilling ever to suspect anything like 
1 Rev. A. L. Byron-Curtiss. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 401 

double-dealing in those with whom he associated, 
giving implicit confidence. No doubt this led to mis- 
takes which were ascribed to the weakness of indiscrim- 
inate sympathy, but were rather due to the habit of 
attributing to others an honesty of purpose which was 
a distinguishing trait of his own character. On the 
loyalty and devotion of his clergy he had good reason 
to depend, and it was a constant subject of gratitude. 
He rejoiced especially in the progress of the young 
men who studied with him, and was ready to advance 
their interests even at a loss to himself. Although he 
strictly exacted the service of the diaconate, he never 
tried to retain a priest when a call came to a wider 
field of usefulness. It was always a matter of pride 
with him that he was largely instrumental in sending 
one of his most trusted presbyters to a Missionary 
Bishopric. Another, who exchanged a city parish 
for one in an adjoining diocese, said in a memorial 
sermon : — 

" The simplicity of his mode of living at once awed 
and won. Here one saw the actual embodiment of 
that high thinking and plain living so much extolled, 
so rarely practiced even by bishops. The strength 
and dignity of his conversation, redolent with wis- 
dom and lightened by flashes of humor, mingled with 
strains of pungent shrewdness, attracted, stimulated, 
and uplifted. You felt the touch of a widely observing 
man, but chiefly realized the sanctifying power of the 
man of God. In the homes of the clergy he left the 
abiding benediction of a sane saintliness, and every- 
where he kept alive men's innate respect for religious 
reality and the seriousness of life." * 
1 Rev. Wm. D. Maxon. 



402 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

In the same month as the consecration of the Church 
of the Saviour, Syracuse, a similar ceremony took 
place at St. Joseph's, Rome, almost as joyful to the 
Bishop, who held close relations to the parish from 
its beginning. In the autumn of 1876 a congregation 
of Germans, under the Roman obedience, had become 
alienated from their own communion and applied 
to Bishop Huntington for a pastor. There was a good 
property, although heavily encumbered. The whole 
number, about fifty families, was received formally 
by Bishop Huntington, and a German clergyman 
placed in charge. Through many discouragements 
the people held bravely together and the parish 
prospered, a gradual accession of English-speaking 
members taking place. The discharge of the in- 
debtedness was a matter of deep anxiety to the head 
of the diocese, and its final accomplishment, in great 
measure through his own persistent efforts, filled 
him with thankfulness. 

On the feast of the Annunciation, 1898, Bishop 
Huntington preached the sermon at the consecration 
of Rev. Henry Satterlee as Bishop of Washington. 
Dr. Satterlee in asking this service wrote to him: 
"As the question of Churchmanship was foremost 
in my mind when I decided to accept the new Bishop- 
ric, I turn to you with almost a passion of longing, 
and in the hope that the first seed of those new tra- 
ditions that will grow up in the new diocese will be 
planted in your sermon. I think that many of the 
clergy of "Washington are going to be present. They 
will be both in a receptive mood for the highest truths 
of the Incarnation and for receiving their bishop as 
the 'Witness of the Resurrection,' and you are the 



THE ROAD UPHILL 403 

one of all others, to speak that word. Please do not 
say nay" 

Hadley, Aug. 24, '99. 

To L. S. H. 

Our summer has been graciously ordered, with 
about the usual amount of desired and needed stillness. 
The position here, and our past, make the place one 
of a great deal of coming and going, — a kind of 
social and kinsfolk Caravansary. But there has been 
no sickness or accident. The atmospheres have been 
singularly luminous; the sunsets so full of glow and 
beauty as to make one wish that they might be fair 
symbols of the final sunset that is in another Western 
sky. 

We have been a great deal in the open air. This 
week all our children have been with us, and all 
Ruth's children, with their father, and George's 
daughter Catharine, a rich blessing. I have preached 
but once, and then to a Congregational flock across 
the river. Silence suits me best. Mary has gone 
to-day to Boston with our friend Canon Benham's 
daughter, from London, our visitor for a month. 

Syracuse, April 1, 1901. 

To his Granddaughter, H. S. S. 

Your description of the water and the land, and 
sky and cloud, at the bridge, renewed my homesick 
wish, that it was my lot to live in that Valley of beauty 
and vision all the year round. I shall never have any 
other "Home" in this world. To have been born 
there is one of my three chief blessings. To have open 
eyes, bodily and mental eyes, for natural scenery, 



404 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

for landscape and the shapings and light of clouds 
you will find a lifelong source of delight, satisfaction, 
and religious comfort. The writer who does most, I 
think, to quicken and kindle that relish is Ruskin, 
especially in "Modern Painters." 

Walnut Place, May 29, 1901. 

To M. N. T. 

There can be no question of the manifest superiority 
of the hymn of Lampertus. I shall keep this version 
among my hymnic treasures, with the Dies Irce and the 
" Mother dear." Gilmore's " He leadeth me " (our 616) 
always affects me, with the music, when I hear it sung. 
You remember old " Hymns for the Church of Christ " ? 
Last week some one sent me from Boston a copy of the 
Programme of the great Unitarian Anniversary 
Festival. To my utter surprise it appeared that a 
hymn of mine, of which I had quite forgotten the 
authorship or the existence, was sung in chorus by 
the multitude. I take it as a proof of Edward Hale's 
genuine liberality. The same mail brought me a 
most cordial birthday greeting from our R. C. 
Bishop Ludden, here. Can the Millennium be at 
hand ? 

During the winter of 1902 there was the first ac- 
knowledged slackening of the Bishop's wonderful vi- 
tality. A few lines printed in the " Gospel Messenger," 
touchingly express his consciousness of enfeebled en- 
ergies. 1 

1 The Gospel Messenger, November, 1902: "An Old Man's Old 
Testament Petitions." 






THE ROAD UPHILL 405 

11 Far on, from hill to hill, my road runs, O my friendliest Friend! 
Less free my plodding feet, less sure my step, less keen my sight. 
Yet in the fading West keep for me to the end 
Thy morning pledge — * At evening-time it shall be light! ' " 



Syracuse, April 2, 1902. 

To M. C. M. 

I shall not go this month to the meeting of the 
House of Bishops, in Cincinnati. Limits are Provi- 
dentially set in the eighty-third year for hard under- 
takings. Mercies are abundant in home and Diocese, 
but liberty and endurance are less. No, I was not of 
any Millionaire's party, not I! Some of my utterances 
would hardly suit them, though I mean to be fair to 
them. Money is a good servant, but a dangerous 
master — and worldliness is the anti-Christ of our 
age and land. 

The Willowdale Mission has already been men- 
tioned. The Bishop wrote of it: "When the time 
comes for the whole story, it will need a rare biographer. 
Probably I shall not be here to read it ; but my know- 
ledge of the woman, saturated and steeped in con- 
fiding love, is better." In a letter to her at Eastertide, 
1898: "Whether there is peace or war among the 
nations, on land or sea, there will be a holy happiness 
with you. I expect to be with two or three Flocks 
here. How many more Easters can an Octogenarian 
expect to keep ? Will you not give an Athanasian greet- 
ing to dear C. S. for me ? " 

In 1901 he wrote, planning for his visit thither a trip 
to include two confirmations and three drives, be- 
tween early morning and night : " I shall get a con- 
veyance in Geneva, and trouble nobody in mind, body, 



406 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

or pocket. A rule of prudence requires me to pass 
nights at home. I am bidden to confine my public 
performances — which will be daily and almost 
continuous till Convention — to the simple admin- 
istration of the Ordinance of Confirmation. Social 
incidents, hospitalities, such as I have often enjoyed 
under your roof must be set aside. These are signs 
that I am traveling towards sunset." 
And once more: — 

Syracuse, May 31, 1902. 
To M. E. H. 

My dear M., dearly beloved: — The hurry-scurry 
of this week and month is nearly over, and to-morrow 
is Rest, and so is the Great To-morrow. 

My journal shows a mixed record, but mostly 
of good things, and all of God's mercies, — six ordi- 
nations of Deacons, and one of Priests, and ever so 
many confirmations. Bishop Walker has made me 
a little visit, and evidently enjoyed his generous 
service all around. 

Pray for the perilous election of a Coadjutor. 

At the Diocesan Convention in June, 1893, Bishop 
Huntington signified his Canonical consent to the 
election of a Coadjutor. Pending any further action 
provision was made that he should have such assist- 
ance in Episcopal duties as should become necessary. 
A sum was also set apart to afford him the aid of 
a secretary. To this post he appointed Dr. Joseph M. 
Clarke, a godly and esteemed presbyter, to whom he 
was indebted for many valuable offices, although he 
seldom found it possible to avail himself of help in 



THE ROAD UPHILL 407 

his correspondence. As the years passed, the bishops 
of Montana and of Western New York both kindly 
held confirmations at times when the Bishop of the 
diocese was disabled, and the question of permanently 
lightening the duties of the Episcopate, brought up 
at succeeding Conventions, was finally left to the 
Standing committee, awaiting further action of the 
Bishop. In May, 1902, age and infirmity pressed so 
heavily that with much reluctance Bishop Huntington 
felt compelled to ask for relief. A notice was sent 
by him to the clergy, parishes, and missions, an- 
nouncing his intention to request the election of a 
Coadjutor at the coming Convention. Pursuant to 
this decision, action was immediately taken to make 
suitable provision for an assistant, and the solemn 
choice was made on June 11, 1902, of the Rev. Charles 
Tyler Olmsted, Vicar of St. Agnes' Church, New 
York, as Coadjutor Bishop of Central New York. 
The event was one of unmitigated satisfaction to 
Bishop Huntington, who had already learned to 
bestow confidence and affection upon one who was 
for fifteen years a presbyter of his own diocese, while 
rector of Grace Church, Utica, and who in church- 
manship and character approved himself as a faithful 
watchman and shepherd of the flock. 

The consecration took place on October 2, at 
Grace Church, Utica, Bishop Huntington acting as 
the presiding bishop. 

Syracuse, May 29, 1902. 
To M. C. M. 

We hope to get off to Hadley before the 26th of June. 
If the Convention elects a Coadjutor, there will be 
of course unusual interest. Pray for us that there 



408 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

may not be prejudice, or partisanship, or needless 
excitement. My need of relief and help is beyond 
question, for the infirmities of age are coming on. 

Hadley, July 11, 1902. 

To G. C. R. 

Letters from all parts of the Diocese show a general 
contentment with the election. The papers are in due 
preparation and there seems to be no reason why the 
consecration should not, D. V., take place towards 
the end of September. All the appointments — time, 
place, Consecrator, Presentor, preacher — are subject 
to the direction of the Presiding Bishop or his Deputy. 
On all these matters there is no voice of authority 
except the omniscient newspaper. The rest is con- 
jecture. 

The stillness here is delicious. We do not feel the 
world's rush; certainly we do not hear its roar. Did 
you see Jerome's sarcasm at the "Springfield Re- 
publican;" the Paper that holds that "whatever 
is is wrong"? It has another maxim: "Whatever is 
wrong is to be made right by being exposed or shown 
up." 

Haying is late. I spend most of my time in the 
three R.'s — reading, writing, and riding, not 'Arith- 
metic " — with a liberal allowance for sleep. There 
is some pain and I can walk but little. 

I have myself an abiding belief that all classes of 
sensible and thoughtful men keep, deep down in their 
better minds, — even the " men of the world " them- 
selves, — respect for those ministers of Christ, preach- 
ers of the Gospel, and spiritual guides of souls, 
who deny themselves some indulgences, avoid some 



THE ROAD UPHILL 409 

entertainments, abstain from some political contests, 
just because they have a vocation to which they 
are in honor bound, provided they do it in a common- 
sense, cheerful, modest, manly fashion. 

Walnut Place, Syracuse, Sept. 27, 1902. 
To M. C. M. 

We have said a regretful good-by to the old Home, 
the only home I can ever have in this world. The 
blessings of the summer have been countless — chil- 
dren and grandchildren coming and going, and all 
upright; friends too, a limit set to pain, a long life con- 
tinued in peace. 

You see I am to have an assistant to whom I can 
assign my work that I am not equal to. His con- 
secration is to be at Utica next Thursday, D. V. If 
you get this, pray for us specially. I believe he is a 
true man and minister. 

Syracuse, Nov. 19, 1902. 
To C. H. T. 

We have neither some distresses nor bewildering 
exultations. My Assistant saves me the discomfort 
and weariness of travel. Excepting a chronic and 
painful lumbago, my endurance and strength enable 
me to call myself well, and I am thankful and content, 
as I rejoice to observe you are. 

That is our ample estate, our wealth, our title for an 
inheritance that fadeth not away. 

I have just read Prof. James's " Lectures on the 
Varieties of Religious Experience," but get no nourish- 
ment or foothold, only a discovery that he has no belief 
of his own. 



410 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

The merciful Father grant you patience, and con- 
tinue your peace. 

Faithfully and cordially, 

F. D. Huntington. 



Syracuse, Feb. 18, 1903. 

To J. M. 

We shall be thankful when you shall have looked 
long enough toward the Pacific sea and the Western 
sky. Sunsets are well enough in their time and place: 
sometimes they are beautiful enough to be gateways 
of glory, preludes to songs and splendors beyond; but 
after all, their richest significance is that they are a 
preparation and fore-token of another Day and a 
Light to come. So if you tarry awhile in the country 
of evening it is that you may be refreshed and re- 
cruited for a to-morrow of strength and labor where 
labor lies and loving hearts arc watching and waiting 
for you. It seems long. It must seem longer to you, 
without the Home and the home-faces and voices; 
for voices and faces alike reveal the soul. You can 
realize the line in Gray's immortal Elegy: " The 
plowman homeward plods his weary way." 

Your plowing has been in a large "field." Mine 
has been small. I have never spent so inactive a 
winter. On Sundays I generally find Sabba-day work, 
but the other six days I am apt to be by my wood-fire, 
or if I go out in the cold, I rarely get much further 
than Salina Street. If somebody does n't stir me up I 
shall get incorrigibly lazy. The daily mail keeps me 
awake till bedtime, — sometimes with sympathy, 
sometimes with vexation. 



THE ROAD UPHILL 411 

Lent is coming and ought to put us in mind that 
there is another world than this and a better one. 
Most cordially and affectionately, 

F. D. Huntington. 

From Northampton, where Bishop Huntington 
passed Easter, 1903, with his daughter and her family : — 

Easter Day, — afternoon. 

To Mrs. Huntington. 

" The Lord is Risen! " 

G. met me this morning with Viking. The roads 
everywhere are alive with people. I came back here 
for the service. The valley is fine in the sunshine. 

Hearing the various accounts of men and things, 
and then passing out alone into the unchanged scenery 
of the landscape, the contrast struck me between the 
human and the divine, the mortal and the everlasting. 
" Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all gen- 
erations." There, in the graveyard, was lying the body 
of the oldest of my family: I the youngest moving 
by it; many changes betw T een then and now, and yet 
all how transitory ! But the Feast of the Resurrection 
survives. One act, one Person, one Morning, changes 
the history of the world and the character of mankind 
as a race. 

Walnut Place, May 31, 1903. 
To M. N. T. 

The years multiply. The surface of life shifts, the 
figures change. But friendship and affections abide 
unaltered. 

The last week, H. and I have been in Boston and 
Hadley. We had but two days for talks and duties in 



412 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






Cambridge and the neighborhood, except Sunday 
at Emmanuel. It was much impressed upon me how 
many of those I had well known and cared for had 
gone — how few are left. 

The last time when the family, children and grand- 
children, were gathered together at the old home- 
stead was on Sept. 4, 1903, in honor of a rare event, — 
the sixtieth anniversary of the parents' marriage. 
Since the Golden Wedding ten years before no break 
had occurred in the circle, and two little children, the 
youngest grandsons, were added to it. The whole 
number were together but twenty-four hours, but the 
brief time passed in happy and grateful intercourse, 
and the family prayers that morning in the Bishop's 
study were a beautiful and solemn commemoration. 

Another interest in the occasion, especially among 
the older grandsons, members of the sixth generation 
since the house was built, arose from the fact that in 
that month of September, just one hundred and fifty 
years had elapsed since Moses Porter raised the roof- 
tree. 

Syracuse, Oct., 1903. 
To a Granddaughter, H. S. S. 

It is almost a month since we were turned out of the 
Hadley Paradise into the wide world. Perhaps your 
school-scenery and school-life do not feel exactly like 
the wide world. But we are better for some limitations. 
They may be large or small, broad or narrow, but 
God's Providence has so made us, and so arranged 
the conditions of our life, that it is best for us to act, to 
work, to expend our sympathies and interest and in- 
fluence, within certain bounds. To be sure, it is com- 




BISHOP AND MRS. HUNTINGTON, 1895 



THE ROAD UPHILL 413 

mon to talk of "society" as if it were something so 
advantageous and profitable that the bigger it is, and 
the more one knows of it, the better. But then it is a 
very mixed thing in itself everywhere; it is full of 
excesses and follies and dangers ; it is apt to be super- 
ficial; it may hurt the independence and dignity of 
individual or personal womanhood or manhood; and 
all that we really need to know of it can generally be 
learned in a refined family, in a school like yours, 
or in a carefully chosen and guarded circle. 

Some people think it is enough to conform de- 
cently to the popular standard, without considering 
that it is every one's duty to help make the " popular 
standard" what it ought to be. You will take your 
principles and rules of conduct and opinions from 
a higher source than the customs and fashions that 
prevail about you. This trait, I am glad to believe, 
is hereditary in the Huntington-Phelps blood. 

Syracuse, Dec. 19, 1903. 
To W. H. C. 

My dear Brother : — The language of Canon 17 
seems to warrant you in asking and allowing any 
devout person to read one or both of the lessons at 
morning or evening Prayer, without ordination. This 
privilege is not forfeited, I suppose, by the circum- 
stance that the lay-reader may have been made, or 
has acted, as a minister, preacher, or pastor, of a non- 
episcopal congregation. 

If I am ever disposed to desire a large Episcopal 
authority, it is in order that I may exercise a larger 
liberty in setting aside some of the more minute 
rubrical and ecclesiastical prohibitions and require- 



414 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

nients which may be necessary, in their general opera- 
tion,, to Church-order and regularity, but which do 
sometimes come in conflict with reason or common 
sense. 

I wish you strength and peace, in Family and Flock, 
at the coining Feast and alwavs and evermore. 
Affectionately and faithfully, 

F. D. Huntington. 

Walnut Place, JaD.o. 1904. 

My dear George : — If all people that were 
seeking the Truth had their faces set one way. all 
moving in one direction, only at different distances, 
and by various and devious routes, the sermon, which 
I have just read, would be not only able but admirable. 
I wish I could be sure that I understand it; so far as I 
do, it recognizes no such thing as false or dangerous 
error, there is room in God's plan for every possible 
kind and degree of heresy. In fact there is logically 
no such thing as heresy. The line between Truth and 
Falsehood disappear-: nobody can tell at all where it 
runs. " The faith " is either an abstraction or a phan- 
tom. The Church is the world and everybody is a 
Churchman, Sin is utterly ignored. Nobody is willing 
or intending to do wrong, or to think wrong. Orthodoxy 
is a phantasy or a dream. If there is Catholicity at all. 
Doctrine, Dogma, is not an element in it. 

The sermon ends with an open, distinct, unqualified 
proclamation that the one only condition of admission 
to the Kingdom of God is — Love, — which in my 
opinion is the one perilous, destructive, plausible, wide- 
spread and spreading delusion of Christendom, the anti- 
christ that successfully tempts Unitarian-. Universal- 



THE ROAD UPHILL 415 

ists, rationalists, Broad-Churchmen, neologists of every 
description. 

In the division of episcopal duties with his co- 
adjutor, Bishop Huntington retained, as his own 
share, the ordination of priests, with visitations in the 
fourth Missionary district, comprising the city of 
Syracuse, Onondaga and several counties adjacent. 
Through the following season he was able to keep his 
appointments in this limited area and to preside at the 
annual Convention in June. During the summers 
of extreme age he lacked sufficient strength to perform 
public work, and, for the only time in his long life, did 
no Sunday duty in the vacation, but was content 
to worship with his wife and children at one of the 
churches in the neighborhood — either at Grace, 
Amherst, or at St. John's, Northampton. The last 
record of preaching in the Connecticut Valley was 
one Sunday in August, 1899, when he was rowed 
across the river, from his own meadow to the opposite 
bank, and walked through the fields to the Hatfield 
meeting-house, where he spoke to the assembled con- 
gregation. 

Under that pulpit his grandfather's family had often 

sat in the days of the Revolution; and its preacher, 

in his own youth, Dr. Lyman, 1 was by marriage a 

family connection. Associations with the past and the 

1 Rev. Joseph Lyman, D. D. was born in Lebanon, Conn., in 
1749. He graduated from Yale College with high honors, and served 
as pastor of the Congregational Church in Hatfield for over half a 
century. " He ascribed much of his pastoral success to his wife, 
whose ruling aim seemed to be to promote his usefulness." She was 
Hannah, daughter of Simon Huntington, of Lebanon. Simon's elder 
brother Samuel was the grandfather of Rev. Dan Huntington, father 
of Bishop Huntington. 



416 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

sense of neighborly relations were of strong influence 
upon the Bishop, who gladly responded to an oppor- 
tunity to carry the word of God to this flock so near 
his home. 

In the last winter of his life he confirmed in several 
parishes near Syracuse, finding satisfaction in the 
ability to continue his official labors. He preached 
once at the Church of the Saviour, and held an Ordi- 
nation of Priests at Calvary ; and, in the absence of a 
regular minister at the Church of St. John the Divine, 
attended the services several Sundays, celebrating 
the communion and taking charge of the affairs of 
the parish. Excepting afternoon confirmations in the 
city churches, and the accustomed Sunday vesper 
services at the Hospital of the Good Shepherd, which 
he never missed except in actual illness, these were 
the only ministrations of the closing months of his life. 

He continued each month to attend the meetings 
of the Hospital trustees, business discussions often 
trying and perplexing, through the many questions to 
be settled, in all of which he felt a deep concern. He 
also presided on the board of the "Shelter for Un- 
protected Girls " and at the monthly meetings of the 
managers of the State Institution for the Feeble- 
minded. His sympathy for personal afflictions, es- 
pecially those of children, and his early friendship 
for the founder, Dr. Wilbur, led him, when he first 
came to Syracuse, to take an interest in this work. 
From a similar feeling he was led to realize the neg- 
lected religious condition of the deaf-mutes, scattered 
through his diocese, — " the silent people of his 
flock" as he called them, — and he appointed a 
priest to minister to them in the sign-language, and 



THE ROAD UPHILL 417 

secured a support through the Junior Branch of the 
Woman's Auxiliary. 

In February a sudden chill came as a premonitory 
sign of failing strength, and though he rallied quickly, 
other attacks followed, with a severe cold, which laid 
him up through most of Lent. 

Syracuse, Feb. 26, 1904. 
To G. C. R. 

After fourteen days indoors, with neuralgia and 
some depression, I have been out relishing the invigo- 
rating air and sunshine. Winter holds on, Spring 
must be somewhere behind the hills. In how many 
ways God teaches us that we are weak, and that only 
He is strong! The "Shelter" and " Hospital" are 
full. 

You must find it needs a stock of spirits to keep up 
cheerfully among the unhappy. Or are they all happy, 
in their way ? 

We have "Walks in New England," &c, &c, but 
Nature always outwits the painters and story-tellers. 

Syracuse, April 1, 1904. 

To M. O'S. 

My very dear Fellow-Pilgrim : — I hope this will 
find you somewhere, and find you in health and peace. 
It is not wholly a peaceful world or society; but we 
have no real war, only confusion coming of wrong 
desires and clashing interests and ungoverned pas- 
sions. Our business, plainly, is not to add to them; 
Good Friday helps to that. Our winter, God's winter, 
has been very merciful to us, and here we are, growing 
old, and not accomplishing much, but praying for one 



418 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

another, giving thanks and waiting. At Hadley I have 
a change of farmers, a venture, — Providence remains 
there from year to year. We seem to hear less and 
less from Berkshire, or " Berkshire Mary." The 
grandchildren are fine. 

Love forever, 

F. D. H. 

Walnut Place, May, 1904. 
To M. R. H. 

You never forget the return of my birthday and 

you faithfully anticipate the eighty-fifth. It is not easy 

for me to realize that the years are so many, for my 

endurance and activity continue and my faculties are 

not much impaired. H. and our two daughters are our 

housemates. Ruth with her three bright and good 

children are at Northampton, and we see much of 

them in summer. My sympathy with you in your 

weakness is most sincere. May it be with you as it 

was with the old English poet : — 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made." 

The happy days at the South Congregational are 
kept in mind. 

Love and blessing for you, in whatever of life it 
shall please God to grant us, to the end. 

With thanks and confidence, 

F. D. Huntington. 

With the coming on of spring the Bishop was able 
to take his daily walks, making his way slowly to the 
Hospital, or across the park to the electric cars, and 
through the city streets, to the bank, the bookstore, 



THE ROAD UPHILL 419 

the news-stand, chatting cheerily with those he met. 
Much of the time at home, when not at his desk, where 
writing became evidently more and more of an effort, 
he would sit by the fire, with a book in his hand but 
not reading much, or resting on a couch in the family 
room. In the evenings he found diversion in playing 
backgammon with a kind neighbor, for whose com- 
pany he would frequently send. A few times he spent 
a half hour with his trusted adviser Rev. Dr. Babcock, 
who had also grown enfeebled by age. Although he 
talked of making one more visit to Utica, among the 
friends there who were endeared to him through years 
of affectionate intercourse, the energy for a day's 
travel did not come. He could not carry out his in- 
tention to be present at the opening services of Holy 
Cross House, at West Park, built by the Order of which 
his son Father Huntington was Superior. He wrote to 
Rev. George Huntington that he hoped to see him 
there on that occasion, but they never met again in 
this world. 

On his birthday, in beautiful May weather, he en- 
joyed a short trip to Cazenovia with his wife, making 
the* journey to baptize a little grandson of his old 
friend Bishop Stevens, in St. Peter's Church. 

Although it seemed at one time very doubtful 
whether he would be able to attend the annual Con- 
vention of the diocese in Rome, on the second Tuesday 
in June, he made the usual preparation, and before 
the time came his bodily strength returned remarkably. 
Mrs. Huntington accompanied him thither to the 
house of friends. He went and came without signs 
of fatigue, leaving the business to be conducted by 
Bishop Olmsted, the Coadjutor; and delivered his 



420 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

address with all the power and animation of earlier 
days. 

After the statistical report he continued : — 
"Calling to mind the fact that we stand with the 
best minds of the best thinkers and students, both of 
the Hebrew monotheism and Gentile speculation, we 
see that in the Church w T e are in the midst of the 
ceaseless conflict between the divine and human, be- 
tween the natural and the spiritual, between what 
God made man to be and what man has made himself 
to be, and that we are as individuals responsible for 
the issue of the struggle. By any mental measurement, 
all the intellectual subtleties of the Athenian and 
Alexandrian philosophy were overmatched by a 
Nazarene carpenter and two fishermen on the banks 
of the Jordan and the Lake of Galilee, with a tent- 
maker from Tarsus. The voice from the Mount of 
Olives and the Cross at Calvary sounds unaltered 
from age to age, and we have heard it and w T e believe 
it. Even the wisest of the Neo-Platonists were respon- 
sible for the paradox: 'This world is the best of all 
possible worlds and everything in it is a necessary evil; ' 
and neither Pantheism nor all the Dualism from the 
early Greeks to St. Paul has been able to reconcile 
that contradiction. It is most impressive and most 
pathetic to see nevertheless in history, how the in- 
wrought idea of a ' something, ' a power and a presence, 
beyond all mortal forces or phenomena, has survived 
in spite of all theological theories and systems. By a 
few simple New Testament affirmations our foothold 
is established and our place made secure. 'I came 
forth from God and am come into the world; ' ' Except 
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 



THE ROAD UPHILL 421 

alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit;' 'This 
is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent; 5 'My doctrine 
is not mine but His that sent me ; ' ' I and my Father 
are one.'" 

At the close he said: "The required work of my 
calling has not been beyond my strength and endurance. 
The relief afforded by the Coadjutor, always ready 
and willing, is ample. There is room with me for re- 
flection and reasonable rest, with freedom from trouble- 
some anxiety. Spoken and written assurances and 
tokens of confidence made the 28th of May bright 
and cheerful for me and my family, as the earth and 
sky were full of the blended beauty of spring and 
summer. The inevitable mortal decline is gradual, 
and so far is partial. All that is needful in the attention 
and assistance of the clergy is offered and provided, 
and the benefits are not wholly obscured by my keen 
regret at having learned so little in a lengthened life, 
by experience and study, and at having forgotten so 
much of what I once knew. The Divine Providence 
to Christ's ministers never fails." 



CHAPTER XII 



THE JOURNEY ENDED 



" The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose window 
opened towards the sun-rising. The name of the chamber was Peace ." 

In all the thirty-five years of his Episcopate it was 
Bishop Huntington's custom to close the year's work 
after Convention with attendance at the graduating 
exercises of St. John's School, Manlius, and for nearly 
that length of time he had been present at those of 
Keble School, Syracuse. This latter, in June, 1904, 
completed its long and successful history, and sent out 
its last class. The Bishop presented the diplomas, 
with the same graceful and appropriate greetings 
and words of Godspeed, as in the days of old. 

The last entry ever made in the record of Sunday 
ministrations, begun in 1842, was of confirmation at All 
Saints Church, Syracuse, on the morning of June 19. 
That afternoon the Bishop read Evening Prayer in the 
chapel at the Hospital of the Good Shepherd, the 
closing service of his Episcopate. 

Once more only did he ever make utterance in public. 
On Monday he and his family left Syracuse, reaching 
the beloved Hadley home that evening after a long and 
wearisome journey. In the mail waiting for him was a 
pressing invitation to attend the Commencement 
exercises the next day at Smith College, and make the 
opening prayer. He arose at five o'clock and, seated 



THE JOURNEY ENDED 423 

at his study-table, wrote out the petitions which he 
offered that morning in the College chapel. One who 
was present said of them after his death: "Bowed 
with the weight of years, but with much of the old 
resonance in his voice, his words had the authority 
of a stainless life behind them; they bore the impress 
of long familiarity with the best devotional literature; 
they were nobly simple and inclusive of the widest 
human interests." * 

During the week that followed, the power and 
associations of the past asserted themselves in spite 
of failing attention and evident inability to read or 
write. The Bishop drove once more through the 
wood-paths of his farm, wandered in the meadow and 
sat dreamily watching the haymakers. Even when his 
nights were broken, he could pass the time out of doors 
through the day, and drive about a little; one day 
attending for a few minutes the graduation exercises of 
Hopkins Academy, the school of his boyhood. On 
Sunday he went to St. John's Northampton, having in 
the seat with him the granddaughter who, since her 
babyhood, had been his favorite companion. The 
next morning, though manifestly more feeble, his 
first thought was a promise to bring his daughter 
and her children from their home in Northampton 
to the house at Pine Grove. 

As he drove down the valley and across the river, 
he remarked on the perfection of the landscape under 
a radiant June sky, the lights and shadows on the 
mountains, the rich verdure of the meadows, and the 
peace and restfulness of the countryside. 

In the twilight that evening he sat for awhile under 

1 The Outlook, July 23, 1904. 



424 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 






the old elm tree planted by his grandfather, the farm 
dog on the grass at his feet. Two hours later one of 
the sudden chills came on, which marked the begin- 
ning of some serious disorder, plainly connected with 
the wearing out of the brain, for his mind wandered 
from the first and became more and more clouded. 
There was much pain and restlessness, but he was 
comforted by the presence of his wife and daughters, 
and happy to greet his younger son when he came 
for a few days. He was quite unaware that the eldest 
born was lying ill at the rectory at Hanover. 

At first there seemed reason to hope that the wonder- 
ful constitution which had stood the strain of eighty- 
five years of activity would rally from this sharp at- 
tack, and the failure of strength was hardly per- 
ceptible. On Saturday, the morning of July 9, the 
doctor asked him how he was, and he replied quite 
clearly, "Purified as by fire." These were the last 
articulate words, strikingly in accord with the spirit 
of his verses written not long before : — 

" Come, when pain's throbbing pulse in brain and nerves is burning, 
O form of Man! that moved among the faithful three, 
These earth-enkindled flames to robes of glory turning; 
Walk ' through the fire,' peace-giving Son of God, with me ! " 

Sight and hearing seemed to fail after that, and 
when his physician, a family friend, arrived from 
Syracuse that evening, he could not recognize her. 
Messages of love and sympathy, which multiplied 
when the fact of his extreme illness became known, 
never reached his ears; but the many prayers offered 
from hearts all over the land surely brought peace 
and sustaining strength to the departing soul. On 
Monday, when the Commendatory prayers were read 



THE JOURNEY ENDED 425 

in the quiet sick-room by the rector of St. John's 
Church, the soul was very near its release. All that 
day the sweet breath from the new-mown hay was 
wafted in at the open windows, and the sounds of 
homely toil in the fields could be heard, but he who 
had loved it all so well lay unconscious, as the tide of 
life ebbed peacefully away. 

Before the sun sank low in the west, that hour so 
often dwelt upon by him with pathetic longing, the 
light eternal shone upon his vision. 

He was laid to rest beside his father and mother, 
brothers and sisters, in the old cemetery where an- 
cestors for generations had slept. There was no op- 
portunity for pomp and ceremonial in the simple 
country funeral, and it was what he would have liked 
best. By a strange and mysterious dispensation Rev. 
George Huntington, the older son, was taken away 
suddenly, while suffering from a low fever, just two 
hours after his father breathed his last; and his sons 
brought him back to the homestead to be laid in the 
earth at the same time. The old "Long room" had 
been often the scene of holy rites, — baptisms, mar- 
riages, and many a service of prayer and praise. 
There the family, with two clergymen, the Bishop's 
successor in office and his first assistant in Emmanuel 
Church, recited the creed and listened to the glorious 
Scripture lesson for the Burial of the Dead. At the 
grave, clergy and choristers in their robes, from near 
and far, with friends and neighbors, gathered for the 
solemn Committal. The day was beautiful, full of 
promise of the better world to come. 

During the services a slight veil covered the sky, 
but when the uplifted voices reached the sixth verse 



426 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

of the hymn, " For all the saints who from their labors 
rest," a brilliant shaft of light from the sinking sun 
broke across the vistas of hillside and meadow, 
kindling the vestments of those ministering into an 
almost unearthly radiance, with a reminder to the 
assembled worshipers of that other "golden evening" 
which " brightens in the West" and of the "yet more 
glorious Day." 

"THEN I HEARD IN MY ' DREAM ' THAT ALL THE BELLS 
OF THE CITY RANG FOR JOY." 



APPENDIX 



GENEALOGICAL NOTES 



I. Moses Porter's grandfather, Samuel Porter, 
was the first male child born in Hadley, and his great- 
grandmother, Sarah Westwood, the first bride. She 
married Aaron Porter, a son of Aaron, who accom- 
panied the Colonists from Dorchester, Massachusetts, 
to Windsor, Connecticut; was active in the Indian 
wars, a famous slayer of wolves, and, finally, a Major 
under Governor Andros. He went with the settlers 
to Northampton, at the special request of his minister, 
Rev. Mr. Mather; built a homestead on the hill where 
the Forbes Library now stands, and was buried in the 
old graveyard. His name and deeds are commemo- 
rated by a handsome monument erected by a de- 
scendant, the father of the late Professor Josiah 
Parsons Cooke, of Harvard College. 

II. Rev. John Whiting was closely connected with 
the Regicide judges, Goffe and Whalley, and is known 
to have been the secret medium for their correspond- 
ence with Increase Mather. 

His second wife, Phoebe, an ancestress whose mem- 
ory Bishop Huntington always cherished, was the 
daughter of Thomas Gregson, an active member of 
the New Haven Colony, and intimately associated with 
its pastor, Rev. John Davenport. After her husband's 
death, Mrs. Whiting became the third wife of his 



428 FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON 

friend, Rev. John Russell, rightly called " the Hero of 
Hadley," since it was through his courage, endurance, 
and unflinching fidelity to the trust imposed in him 
that the Regicides were concealed under his roof for 
many years. Phoebe survived him, and spent the last 
years of her life in New Haven. It may be worthy 
of note that Rev. John Whiting was the ancestor of 
General Ulysses Grant, whose line comes down 
through the first wife. 

III. Mrs. Pitkin's grave is to be found, with the 
headstone marking it, in the Hadley burying-ground, 
next to the raised sandstone tablet on which, in rude 
characters, overgrown with lichens, is inscribed the 
epitaph of her stepfather, Parson Russell. She died 
in 1753, only a few months before the completion of 
the old homestead. 

IV. Connecticut traditions have preserved the story 
of William Pitkin's sister Martha, who came from 
England to visit him, and was persuaded by a com- 
pany of her admirers to remain and select one of 
their number as a husband, her choice falling upon 
Henry Wolcott of Windsor. The worthies of the 
colony maintained that she ought not to be permitted 
to go back to the old country, because " the stock was 
too good." History seems to bear out their prediction, 
since from this ancestress came a long line of distin- 
guished men, beginning with Oliver Wolcott, signer of 
the Declaration of Independence, and including some 
thirty judges and seven governors of states, the latest 
being the lamented Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts. 

V. Bethia Throop, the paternal grandmother of 
Frederic Dan Huntington, was the granddaughter of 
Dan Throop, whose wife, Deborah Church, was de- 



APPENDIX 429 

scended from Richard Warren of the Mayflower. 
According to Connecticut traditions the Throops 
came down from Adrian Scrope, one of the signers 
of the death warrant of Charles the First. After the 
execution of Scrope, on Tower Hill, in 1666, his son 
William, it is said, emigrated to this country and 
changed his name to Throop. Bishop Huntington 
used to remark, playfully, that he was led to account 
for two opposite strains of temperament in his own 
nature by ascribing them to the mixture of Round- 
head and Royalist blood, through the Regicide judge 
and a collateral ancestor, Samuel Huntington, captain 
in King Charles's Life Guards. The brother of Sam- 
uel, Simon, sailed for this country and died on a ship 
in New Haven Harbor; but his sons Simon and 
Christopher were founders of the town of Norwich, 
Connecticut, and from them, so far as genealogical 
records show, are descended those of the name scat- 
tered over this wide land. William Huntington, who 
married Bethia Throop, was the great-grandson of 
Mary Fairbanks, born in the house in Dedham, Mas- 
sachusetts, which is preserved by the Fairbanks family 
in America as an interesting historical relic. She mar- 
ried Michael Metcalf in 1644. 

VL The early history of Bishop Huntington's 
birthplace, with that of his mother's family, may be 
found in the little volume " Under a Colonial Roof- 
tree," published by C. E. Wolcott, Syracuse. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PUBLICATIONS STILL IN PRINT 

Sermons for the People, 8th Edition, 12mo . . $1.00 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
Christian Believing and Living, twenty-five sermons 

$1.20 net 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 

Christ in the Christian Year and in the Life of 

Man, Sermons for Laymen, Vol. I, Advent to 

Trinity, 12mo, 404 pages . .... $1.50 

Vol. II, Trinity to Advent, 12mo . . . . $1.50 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
Christ and the World, Secularism the Enemy of the 

Church paper, 25 cts. 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
Helps to a Holy Le,nt, 16mo .... $1.00 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
Forty Days with the Master, 12mo 

cloth, $1.00, white cloth, $1.25 
E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
Days of Lent, Selected readings hy W. M. L. Jay, 

12mo $1.25 net 

E. P. Dutton & Co., New York 
The Fitness of Christianity to Man : The Bohlen 

Lectures of 1878, 12mo 75 cts. 

Thomas Whittaker, New York 
Personal Religious Life in the Ministry and in 

Ministering Women, 12mo . . . cloth, 75 cts. 

Thomas Whittaker, New York 
Good Talking and Good Manners ; Fine Arts . $1.00 

C. E. Wolcott, Syracuse, N. Y. 
Home-keeping a Fine Art .... paper, 35 cts. 

C. E. Wolcott, Syracuse, N. Y. 
High Minds and Low .... paper, 35 cts. 

C. E. Wolcott, Syracuse, N. Y. 
Unconscious Tuition .... paper, 15 cts. 

C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y. 



INDEX 



Agassiz, Louis, 111, 119, 120. 
Amherst, 32, 38-43, 122, 225, 296, 

375, 391, 415. 
Anti-slavery Movement, 16, 127. 

Brook Farm, 56, 68, 69. 
Brooks, Rt. Rev. Phillips, 272. 
Bulfmch, Rev. Stephen Greenleaf , 

65. 
Bushnell, Rev. Horace, 190. 

C. A. I. L., 353, 356-358. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 51-54, 56. 
Channing, Rev. William Ellery, 12, 

14, 25, 46, 85. 
Child, Francis J., 119. 
Church of the Good Shepherd, 240, 

242, 243, 287. 
Clapp, Rev. Dexter, 39, 40. 
Clark, Rt. Rev. Thomas M., 199. 
Coleridge, Hartley, 127. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 51, 54. 
Cooke, Josiah Parsons, 169. 
Coolidge, Rev. James I. T., 72, 85, 

94, 163, 200, 201. 
Coxe, Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland, 

201, 202, 273, 280, 381. 
Cullis, Dr. Charles, 241. 

Day, Chancellor James Roscoe, 

385. 
De Quincey, Thomas, 51. 
Dwight, President Timothy, 3. 

Eastburn, Rt. Rev. Manton, 169, 
209, 212, 216, 218, 220, 247, 305. 



Eliot, President Charles W., 118, 

121. 
Ellis, Rev. Rufus, 5, 62. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 29, 42, 54, 

55, 69. 
Emmanuel Church, 214, 217-220, 

237, 242-245, 250, 273, 277, 278, 

287, 288, 315, 350, 397, 425. 

Felton, President Cornelius C, 
173-176. 

Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 3, 77, 
84, 103, 108, 404. 

HaU, Rev. Edward B., 30, 154, 
155, 180. 

Harvard University, 16, 18, 24, 46- 
49, 103, 104, 107, 110-140, 168, 
172, 173, 203, 204, 305. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 69. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 206. 

Hopkins Academy, 26, 423. 

Hopkins, President Mark, 192-195. 

Huntington, Elizabeth Whiting 
Phelps, youth and marriage, 1-8 ; 
birth of son Frederic Dan, 8, 9 ; 
religious life, 12-29, 180 ; excom- 
munication, 12-16, 371 ; interest 
in reform movements, 16, 127, 
151, 253 ; letters, 20, 33, 89 ; ill- 
ness and death, 92 ; her jour- 
nal, 7-9, 93 ; recollections of , 180, 
181, 302, 331, 392. 

Huntington, Rev. Dan, youth and 
marriage, 1, 3; early ministry, 
8-16 ; removal to Hadley, 63 ; 



434 



INDEX 



petition to Hadley church. 10 ; 
letters from. 72. 90 ; letters to. 
56, 209 ; family memorial, 143. 
141 ; death. 233. 

Hunting-ton, Rev. George Putnam. 
86, 120, 152. 206, 225. 229. 270. 
280, 289. 297. 308, 309, 3.3-3. 335, 
a37, 366-368, 375. 419. 424. 425. 

Huntington, Rev. James Otis Sar- 
gent, 100, 101, 289, 312. 333-336, 
337. 33S. 353. 375. 419. 424. 

Huntington, William. 3. 

Huntington, Rev. William Reed. 
114, 138, 142. 218, 219, 244, 262, 
263, 425. 

Huntington, Rt. Rev. Frederic- 
Dan, heritage. 1-8 ; boyhood, 
1-32 ; reading in youth. 25. 26. 
41, 42. 47, 51, 52. 54, 00 : educa- 
tion, 17. 18, 23. 25-28, 30. 31, 
37-44, 50-53, 60, 6>3 ; early reli- 
gious influences. 14-17. 29, 3 
36, 44-47, 53; college lif^. 
37-44 ; calling to the ministry. 
44-47 ; Cambridge Divinity 
School, 48-67 ; pastorate in the 
South Congregational Society. 
68-110, 140, 418; Boston resi- 
dences. .S.J. 218; the Roxbury 
home, 86, 87-91 ; awakening to 
the facts of sin and repentance, 
93, 135-137. 414; the 

Plummer Professorship, 103; in- 
duction at Harvard as Professor 
of Christian Morals, 114-117; 
life at Cambridge, 110-153 : 
change of religious belief, 93-96. 
153-172, 176-183. 266. 3E 
entrance into the Episcopal 
Church, 194-201, 209-212. 221. 
366 ; rectorship at Emmanuel 
Church, 214-279 ; elections to 
the Episcopate. 267. 27.^: conse- 
cration as Bishop of Central New 
York, 280 ; spiritual influence, 



79. 99, 123. 1-4. 188, 253, 269. 311, 
314, 340, 344. 383; preaching. 
61-64. 7>. 13-. 148, 244, 250-250, 
296. 311. 313. 344. 355, 379. 3--. 
ES, 415 ; observance of the 
Christian Year. 92, 138, 139. 149. 
195. 234. 248. 339 ; editorial 
work. 39. 89, 154, 157. 263, 394; 
acquaintance with religious po- 
etry. 101, 102. 139, 140. Ins. 260. 
261. 404 ; interest in the Peace 
Movement. 16. 74, 151, 258. _ 
394 ; sense of social responsi- 
bility. 52. 67-70. 72. -4. 85, 106, 
141. 143. 241, 306, 307, 324-327. 
353. 358 ; labor on the farm. 21. 
22. 32. 42. 59, 121. 235, 271. 369 ; 
love of Nature. 22, 45. 91. 2 

404; the Hadley home. 27- 
31. 146, 234-237, 271. 296, 339, 
369, 108; writings, 

text-book on the Book of A 
B8; lectures, unpublished. 90 ; 
Unconscious Tuition, 30, 122 ; 
Divine Aspects of Human Soci- 
ety. 132. 142. 149. 353 ; Sermons 
for the People, 140-143, 149, 166, 
168; Christian Believing and 
Living, 164, 169, 182-184, 200. 
204- ; Helps to a Holy 

Lent, 304, 319 ; New Helps to a 
Holy Lent. 319 ; Fitness of Chris- 
tianity to Man : Bohlen Lec- 
tures. 320 ; Christ in the Chris- 
tian Year and in the Life of 
Man. Vol. I, Advent to Trinity. 
; Vol. II, Trinity to Advent. 
: Forty Days with the 
Master. 372 : Miscellaneous, 3'.'. 
54- 1". 2.50-260, 

264, 265, 353, 356, 371-373. 

Keble School. Syracuse. 316, 



INDEX 



435 



Litchfield, 4, 7. 

Lyman, Mrs. Anne Jean, 41. 

Martin, Grace, 6. 
May, Rev. Samuel J., 96, 327. 
Muhlenberg, Rev. William A., 
205, 208, 220, 261. 

Northampton, 13, 14, 23, 24, 27, 30, 
41, 42, 63, 64, 411, 415, 418, 423. 

Olmsted, Rt. Rev. Charles Tyler, 
407, 409, 425. 

Palmer, Rev. Ray, 187, 188. 
Parker, Rev. Theodore, 54, 55, 58, 

68, 69, 88, 214. 
Parks, Rev. Edward A., 191, 192. 
Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, 118. 
Phelps, Mrs. Almira Lincoln, 18. 
Phelps, Charles, Senior, 31. 
Phelps, Charles, 2, 3, 7, 8, 370. 
Phelps, Charles Porter, 2, 64. 
Phelps, Nathaniel, 2, 6. 
Pitkin, Nathaniel, 2. 
Pitkin, William, 2, 428. 
Porter, Moses, 1, 2, 412. 
Potter, Rt. Rev. Henry Codman, 

380. 
Putnam, Rev. George, 17, 58, 62, 

72, 83, 86, 103. 

Sargent, Epes, 71, 76. 

Sargent, John Osborne, 71, 76, 77. 



South Congregational Parish, 68, 

72, 74-79, 84-87, 103, 107, 108, 

140, 418. 
St. Andrew's Divinity School, 289, 

312, 316, 346. 
St. John's School, Manlius, 300, 

301, 313, 422. 
Storrs, Rev. Richard Salter, 43, 

134, 189. 
Sumner, Charles, 127-130. 
Syracuse, 96, 282, 289, 308, 317, 324, 

325, 334, 346, 347, 375, 382-386, 

395, 396, 416, 422. 

Transcendentalism, 53, 55, 57, 70. 

Unitarianism, 11, 45, 56, 159, 160, 
176, 361, 404. 

Vinton, Rev. Alexander, 203-206, 
213. 

Walker, Rev. James, 53, 114, 161, 

167,173. 
Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr., 49, 53, 55, 

60, 74. 
Warwick, 46-48, 61, 340. 
Whipple, Rt. Rev. Henry B., 229, 

232. 
Whittingham, Bt. Rev. William 

R., 302. 
Willard, Mrs. Emma, 18. 
Williams, Rt. Rev. John, 202, 203, 

333. 



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